Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (born 19 December 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya), is a paleontologist, archaeologist and conservationist. He is the second of the three sons of the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, the younger brother of Colin Leakey. A high school drop-out, Leakey discovered his love of paleontology when he led an expedition to a fossil site he had discovered while flying. Frustrated by the lack of recognition he received for his accomplishments due to his lack of scientific credentials, Leakey left for England to catch up on his high school education. However, after six months, Leakey returned home to continue his safaris. He never completed his degree.
Early life
Sunshine and animals
As small boy Richard lived in Nairobi with his parents, Louis Leakey, curator of the Coryndon Museum, and Mary Leakey, director of the Leakey excavations at Olduvai, and his two brothers, Jonathan and Philip. He lived a life that many would consider enviable. All the boys had ponies and belonged to the Langata Pony Club. They had jumping and steeplechase competitions but often they rode for fun across the plains to the Ngong Hills chasing and playing games with the animals. Sometimes the whole club were guests at the Leakeys for holidays and vacations. Richard's parents also founded the Dalmatian Club of East Africa and won a prize in 1957. Dogs and many other pets shared the Leakey domicile. The Leakey boys participated in games conducted by both adults and children, in which they tried to imitate early man, catching springhares and small antelope by hand on the Serengeti. They drove lions and jackals from the kill to see if they could do it.[1]
Shadows
The first dark shadows lengthened when Richard was 11. He fell from his horse, fractured his skull and lay near death. Coincidentally it was this incident that saved his parents' marriage. Louis was seriously considering leaving Mary for his secretary, Rosalie Osborn. As the battle with Mary raged around the house, Richard begged his father from his sickbed not to leave. That was the deciding factor. Louis broke with Rosalie and the family lived in happy harmony for a few years more.[2]
Thanks but no thanks
The Leakey boys had nannies like their father before them. At age 11 Richard entered the Duke of York Secondary School (later known as Lenana School). The Mau Mau rebellion was just winding down, the settlers believed they had won a victory, and the mood reflected that struggle and that belief.[3] On his first day Richard advocated for racial equality, like his father. Calling him a "lover of niggers", the other students locked him in a wire cage, spit and urinated on him and poked him with sticks. The school administration blamed Richard. After he was later caned for missing chapel, Richard resolved never to be a Christian.
Circumstances such as these do not favor a successful academic career; in effect, Richard was denied a formal education. He skipped class frequently in favor of a business he started, selling small animals to be photographed by Des Bartlett. In December, 1960, Richard reached his 16th birthday and promptly quit the Duke of York. His parents gave him a choice−go back to school or support himself.
Teen-age entrepreneur
Richard chose to support himself, borrowed 500 pounds from his parents for a Land Rover, and went into the trapping and skeleton supply business with Kamoya Kimeu. Already a skilled horseman, outdoorsman, rover mechanic, archaeologist and expedition leader, he learned to identify bones, all of which skills pointed to a path he did not yet wish to take, just because his father was on it.[4]
The bone business turned into a safari business in 1961. In 1962 he obtained a private airplane pilot license and took tours to Olduvai. It was from a casual aerial survey that he noted the potential of Lake Natron's shores for archaeology. He went looking for fossils in a land rover, but could find none, until his parents assigned Glynn Isaac to go with him. Louis was so impressed with their finds that he gave them National Geographic money for a month's expedition.[5]
Paleontology
Leakey started his career following in the footsteps of his famous parents (Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey) with discoveries of early hominid fossils in East Africa. His first major involvement in fossil-hunting began in 1967 at the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia. In 1969 the discovery of a cranium of Paranthropus boisei caused great excitement. A Homo habilis skull (KNM ER 1470) and a Homo erectus skull (KNM ER 3733), discovered in 1972 and 1975, respectively, were among the most significant finds of Leakey's earlier expeditions. In 1978 an intact cranium of Homo erectus (KNM ER 3883) was discovered.
Turkana Boy, discovered by Kamoya Kimeu, a member of Leakeys' team in 1984 - was the nearly complete skeleton of a 12-year-old (or possibly 9-year-old) Homo erectus who died 1.6 million years ago. Leakey and Roger Lewin describe the experience of this find and their interpretation of it, in their book Origins Reconsidered (1992). Shortly after the discovery of Turkana Boy, Leakey and his team made the discovery of a skull of a new species, Australopithecus aethiopicus (WT 17000).
Leakey's early published works include: Origins and The People of the Lake (both with Roger Lewin as co-author); The Illustrated Origin of Species; and The Making of Mankind (1981). Leakey had an open scientific rivalry with Donald Johanson during the 80's.
Richard's wife Meave Leakey and daughter Louise Leakey still continue paleontological research in Northern Kenya.
Conservation
In 1989 Richard Leakey was appointed the head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department (WMCD) by President Daniel Arap Moi in response to the international outcry over the poaching of elephants and the impact it was having on the wildlife of Kenya. The department was replaced by Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) in 1990, and Leakey became its first chairman. With characteristically bold steps Leakey created special, well-armed anti-poaching units that were authorized to shoot poachers on sight. The poaching menace was dramatically reduced. Impressed by Leakey's transformation of the KWS, the World Bank approved grants worth $140 million. Richard Leakey, President Arap Moi and the WMCD made the international news headlines when a stock pile of 12 tons of ivory was burned in 1989.
Richard Leakey's confrontational approach to the issue of human-wildlife conflict in national parks did not win him friends. His view was that parks were self-contained ecosystems that had to be fenced in and the humans kept out. Leakey's bold and incorruptible nature also offended many local politicians.
In 1993 Richard Leakey lost both his legs when his propeller-driven plane crashed. Sabotage was suspected, but never proved. In a few months Richard Leakey was walking again on artificial limbs. Around this time the Kenyan government announced that a secret probe had found evidence of corruption and mismanagement in the KWS. An annoyed Leakey resigned publicly in a press conference in January 1994. He was replaced by David Western as the head of the KWS.
Richard Leakey wrote about his experiences at the KWS in his book Wildlife Wars: My Battle to Save Kenya's Elephants (2001).
Leakey is currently a visiting fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Politics
In May 1995 Richard Leakey joined a group of Kenyan intellectuals in launching a new political party - the Safina Party. "If KANU and Mr. Moi will do something about the deterioration of public life, corruption and mismanagement, I'd be happy to fight alongside them. If they won't, I want somebody else to do it," announced Richard Leakey. The Safina party was routinely harassed and even its application to become an official political party was not approved until 1997.
In 1999, Moi had to appoint Richard Leakey as Cabinet Secretary and overall head of the civil service at the insistence of international donor institutions as a pre-condition for the resumption of donor funds. Leakey's second stint in the civil service lasted until 2001 when he was forced to resign again.
Bibliography
- Origins (with Roger Lewin) (Dutton, 1977)
- People of the Lake: Mankind and its Beginnings (with Roger Lewin)(Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978)
- Making of Mankind (Penguin USA, 1981)
- One Life: An Autobiography (Salem House, 1983)
- Origins Reconsidered (with Roger Lewin)(Doubleday, 1992)
- The Origin of Humankind (Perseus Books Group, 1994)
- The Sixth Extinction (with Roger Lewin) (Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1995)
- Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures (with Virginia Morell) (St. Martin's Press, 2001)
Notes
- ^ Virginia Morell, Ancestral Passions, Copyright 1995, Chapter 18, "Richard Makes his Move".
- ^ Morell, Chapter 17, "Chimpanzees and Other Loves."
- ^ Within a few years the settlers would be stampeding out of the country at the political victory of Jomo Kenyatta and the independence of Kenya.
- ^ Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind, Copyright 1981, Chapter 1 Page 1. He says he wished to be "free" of his parents' world, a sentiment both Louis and Mary must have understood very well, even though they opposed his freedom.
- ^ Morell, Chapter 18, "Richard Makes his Move." Besides Richard and Glynn, the roster included Barbara Isaac, Philip leakey, Hugo van Lawick and six of Mary's African assistants.