This week’s book is “The Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists, and the Indian Rhinoceros” by Hemanta Mishra, with forewords by Bruce Babbitt and Jim Fowler.

Book Summary: The Soul of the Rhino is the uniquely personal journey of Hemanta Mishra, the native Nepali who, inspired by Yellowstone, helped create Chitwan National Park. Mishra tells us the personal story of his three decade mission to protect Nepal’s rhinos, from the riverine forests of Chitwan with his Tharu guide, to his epiphany at Yellowstone – and back to Nepal to build one of the world’s last havens for the greater one-horned rhino. A touching account of the early struggles between Nepali culture, politics, and rhino conservation science, The Soul of the Rhino is a unique and remarkable journey that is not be missed.

Why this book is important: The Soul of the Rhino is a real-life lesson in tenacity: How one man’s love and admiration for the greater one-horned rhino changed Nepal’s wildlife conservation strategy forever. Mishra’s gift to the reader is both touching and brutal, a source of inspiration proving that one person’s calling in life can be the catalyst for saving a species.

Quotable moment:

For me, the greatest challenge for conservation in Chitwan was linking human welfare to saving the rhino. Though my methods to face these challenges changed, my mission remained the same for three decades. How was I to help rhinos and humans live as good neighbors? How was I to make a live rhino worth more than a dead one? How was I to develop schemes that provided direct economic benefits to the local people? For wildlife managers these questions are still as valid today as they were thirty years ago and are applicable to all endangered species.

Hemanta Mishra’s Yellowstone ‘epiphany’

On the last day of my visit, I purified myself by sprinkling the chilly water of the Yellowstone River all over my body. Later in the afternoon I watched Old Faithful shoot a dense column of steam and water more than 150 feet up in the air. I prayed to the unseen and unknown deities of Yellowstone and said to myself, “If the Americans could do it in the nineteenth century, why can’t we, the Nepalese, do it in the twentieth century?”

In July 1972 I returned to Nepal to continue my work in building Nepal’s first national park in Chitwan.

Where to purchase ‘The Soul of the Rhino’

You can purchase The Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists, and the Indian Rhinoceros online at Amazon.com.

Rhishja Cota-Larson

I am the founder of Saving Rhinos LLC, which publishes news and information about the global rhino crisis. Besides writing Rhino Horn is Not Medicine, I am the author of the book Murder, Myths & Medicine, the Editor of Project Pangolin, and a writer for the environmental news blog Planetsave. When I'm not blogging about the illegal wildlife trade, I like to rock out to live music.

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See Rhino Horn is Not Medicine for more information.