The Desert Vet

by Alex Tinson

  I was at the point where I had proven my bona fides to the Crown Prince and his advisers beyond any shadow of a doubt. We’d had huge success with the breeding program and bit by bit we were delivering on the promise of producing champions that would win at major races, gradually chipping away at the dominance of our Dubai rivals. We had developed world-leading technology and techniques, which we were practising from superb facilities, carefully built up over years.

  Flash Harry needed to be reined in, or at least have his energies directed elsewhere. It was time for my alter ego to go straight and for Harry to graduate from marketing and merchandising to something meaningful.

  Harry was given a mission: to take a message of conservation to the world and make it a better place. It was time for Harry to go global.

  Fifteen

  Animal of the future

  For most people, a camel is a goofy collection of body parts: knobbly knees; a droopy, drooling mouth; a ridiculously long neck that cranes and bends as though it has a life of its own. And a hump, of all things—not to store water, but as a fat reserve to survive without food in the desert. An improbable animal indeed, but then again you could say it is the only possible animal given the circumstances. I am happy to concede that the camel is one of the more unusual-looking of God’s creatures. As a vet, though, the more I learned about the camel, the more complex the animal became and the more I wanted to know. I came to develop an endless respect for it. This is not to be confused with love—as I vet, I don’t do that—but profound respect.

  If you were going to design an animal from zero to survive in extreme conditions, you would come up with the camel. That’s certainly the verdict of fifty million years of evolution.

  Camels get a bit of flak in places like the north of Australia where they’re seen as a pest. But its grazing habits make it perfectly in tune with its natural environment. It is a browsing animal; it picks here and there for its food and doesn’t eat out an area. It moves around and comes back in circles. So, left to its own devices, it conserves its own environment. The camel doesn’t damage its waterholes like cattle and sheep do. And in terms of its gut and ruminations it produces less methane, so it is lower on greenhouse emissions.

  At a purely technical level, from top to bottom there is so much that is extraordinary about a camel. Its feet are padded and splayed so it can walk across the soft sand of the desert, rather than sink into it. It has three eyelids, rather than two, with the third acting as a backup wiper to remove sand and dirt.

  The camel has an incredible series of adaptations that allow it to be super-efficient with whatever water it has. It has three different compartments in its stomach and moves water from one to the other as it’s needed. It expels as little fluid as possible, excreting hard pellets of faeces after re-absorbing water in the large bowel and recirculating it. It has incredibly efficient kidneys that concentrate the urine to stop water loss.

  The camel also has a mechanism to conserve fluid in extreme heat: its core temperature can go from thirty-seven up to around forty-one degrees before it needs to sweat, so it allows itself to get hotter than other animals. If it’s sitting around in the middle of summer minding its own business, the camel will seek shade and orientate its body to minimise the heat it absorbs, then it will dissipate heat during the night, in time for the next hot day. The fact that it is built for sitting rather than standing means it has a lower heat profile.

  Camels have a unique counter-current system at the back of their nose and near their brain, like an air-conditioner that exchanges heat so the blood travelling to the brain is the right temperature.

  When a camel is dehydrated, you can witness them drinking a hundred litres of water at a sitting and watch them reinflate. No other animal can take in water at volume so quickly. We humans would probably die if we tried this, because the sudden osmotic switch in our red blood cells would be so severe that they would rupture. The camel, unlike us, has spheroidal red blood cells, which can swell to 150 per cent of their normal size.

  For me, the camel is the poster pin-up animal for conservation. It is the animal of the future, the animal of the twenty-first century.

  Global warming means the planet is drying out. The deserts are getting bigger and water is a huge issue. For most people in the developed world desertification isn’t really a problem, but for those who live in the forty per cent of the world classified as arid or dry, it is critical. The awful fact about the creeping spread of deserts is that it threatens the world’s poorest populations in areas such as India and sub-Saharan Africa, making it even harder to reduce poverty. It is one of the greatest environmental challenges we face and affects about a third of the people in the world.

  So one thing is for sure: the more the world turns into desert, the greater the need for camels. But at the same time, there are many parts of the developing world where the camel is endangered.

  The UAE itself has had huge experience with saving desert animals that have become endangered because of increasing development or over-hunting. The oryx is a very good example. The Bedouin traditionally believed the oryx possessed mystical powers and that by eating them you would take on those powers. Consequently it was hunted almost to extinction. At one stage the oryx ceased to exist in the wild: by the mid-1980s there were only about a thousand oryx remaining, all of them in captivity, either in zoos or in private collections. The International Union for Conservation of Nature classified it as one of the most endangered animals in the world.

  Private zoos like Sheikh Sultan’s played an important role in saving the oryx from extinction. In one way, yes, his zoo was a showcase; but in another way it was the oryx breeding programs of Sheikh Sultan and others that helped build up their numbers. Between them the sheikhs have made good use of their private collections to this end.

  While the camel embryo project was under way, we suggested we use the same technology to help restore the oryx population. For a while this was a serious proposition. Angus McKinnon and I flew over to London Zoo, the world’s oldest scientific zoo, to learn more about capture and breeding techniques. We explored the idea of using the gemsbok, which is a species of oryx found in the Kalahari Desert, as the surrogate breeders. In the end the sheikhs decided this might be a distraction from the work of the camel program, but we were at least able to advise on ways to optimise oryx breeding.

  As a result of all these efforts, the oryx became the first animal to revert to ‘vulnerable’ status after previously being listed as extinct in the wild. Populations have regenerated to over a thousand individual animals in the wild, and about seven thousand in captivity.

  The President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed, was a conservation fanatic. From the late 1970s he built a latter-day Noah’s Ark on Sir Bani Yas, an island off the coast of western Abu Dhabi. It was designed as a haven for Arabia’s wildlife species that were endangered because of hunting or the pace of development. Dozens of species have been introduced to the island, including the gazelle, oryx, llama, rhea and ostrich. Many of these animals were classified as critically endangered or vulnerable. Sheikh Zayed also planted millions of trees on Sir Bani Yas, in an attempt to create a less arid microclimate.

  So a dedication to conserving animal species very much existed in my own backyard. And one benefit of all my wild schemes was that, for all the money I had lost, I had nonetheless generated enough cash to fund some serious scientific work outside of the camel centre.

  I felt that, while it was fine to use embryo transfer to produce superior racing camels, it would be wonderful if some of that technology could be applied in places like Mongolia or India, where there are endangered camel populations. The science that allowed us to accelerate the natural birth cycle of the camel had enormous ramifications for countries where the camel was facing extinction.

  Poor populations need camels in all sorts of ways. They are a means of transport. They supply hides and milk. They can be eaten. Their dung can be used as fuel.

&nb
sp; It wasn’t part of my job to spread knowledge, but I thought that if I could do the research, come up with some practical spin-offs and write papers, then local government authorities or NGOs might take advantage of my work without having to put in the time and money themselves. I also had the idea that, while visiting these developing countries I could go to schools and introduce them to Harry the Camel and talk to the young about writing and environmental impacts.

  Thus the HEF Foundation was born, to help ‘Harry’s Endangered Friends’.

  My old mates from the early days of the camel centre, Heath Harris and Angus McKinnon, were fellow directors. The aim was to save camels around the world while also educating people about how to protect their camel populations and grow their herds. As a bonus, HEF would also allow me to pursue my passion for adventure, to get out of the lab and into remote places in exotic countries.

  Embryo transfer had helped revolutionise Abu Dhabi’s performance on the track, but if Harry the Camel was to go out and do great work in faraway places then there was much more to be done.

  The issue was how to tailor a lot of our hifalutin embryo transfer techniques into more practical solutions that could be used outside this big, flash multimillion-dollar facility we had. How can such an operation transfer to the desert, where there is no electricity, no sterile lab, and in fact pretty well nothing? How do you strip down the technology to the point where it could be taken into the field so it worked for the camel vet sitting on his own, with not much of anything, in a desert of Rajasthan or in the backblocks of Mongolia?

  I also wanted the technology to be versatile, so it would work with all species of camel. This was not out of the question because ultimately the various species are somehow related, from the one-hump dromedary and the two-hump Bactrian, to the South American llama.

  We fluked onto a solution by playing around in the lab with embryos at different stages of growth. A researcher from the nearby United Arab Emirates University was studying the rat embryo at every point in its growth, from six to thirteen days. Looking over his shoulder through the electron microscope, I could see that a six-day-old rat embryo and a six-day-old camel embryo didn’t look a lot different and were about the same size. I suggested we collect a heap of camel embryos at various stages too, just to see what we got.

  Normally we don’t bother with embryos that are ten and eleven days old, because with most species the bigger the embryo gets, the more fragile it becomes. But we transferred a batch of older, larger camel embryos into some surrogates and, lo and behold, they worked very well. We theorised that the bigger the embryo, the greater was its capacity to trigger the ovaries to tell the camel, yes, you are pregnant. This produces more hormone and off you go.

  This was an important discovery because it meant we could see the embryo and work with it without the need for a high-powered microscope. So, instead of the tiny, microscopic embryos we’d been working with for years, we had now discovered that larger embryos were actually easier to work with and led to the same or better results.

  To transfer these bigger embryos we improvised with plastic artificial insemination straws, about the same width as a Bic biro. It meant we could suck up the embryo, load it up and whack it into the surrogate. We now had a cheap, practical way to do an embryo transfer in the middle of nowhere.

  Our first destination would be Mongolia.

  Sixteen

  The ancient explorers’ club

  Just as the HEF Foundation was coming into life, across the world another camel fanatic was onto something very similar. An Englishman called John Hare had created a foundation with one mission: to save the wild two-hump camel found in the Gobi Desert. Fate again was making connections for me.

  I knew John Hare’s name well; after all, the world of camel fanatics is a small one. John Hare is one of those great British adventurers—men of empire who stoically, even cheerfully, venture into the most remote corners of the globe. John’s home address was Kent, England, but his world was essentially wherever a camel could take him. He is one of those indomitable characters that Britain especially produces.

  John had a colonial African background, something common to many in the British explorer class. He has the distinction of being the last recruit, in 1957, into what was styled as Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Service in northern Nigeria. In other words, he explored the African frontiers for Queen and country.

  Much like my own experience with the Great Australian Camel Race, John developed an ‘unreserved admiration’ for camels when he first used them to cross the kind of terrain which is simply too tough for humans and their machines. John’s many writings cover his extraordinary journeys by camel into the world’s toughest environments. His first expedition was through little explored areas south of Lake Chad on the Nigerian–Cameroon border. A snippet from his writings gives you a flavour:

  Unlike African porters, who had head-carried my kit from one place to another, my camels didn’t complain about the distance or their pay. They didn’t get roaring drunk on pay days, seduce the chief’s daughter or need their feet dusting every day with DDT to prevent jiggers from laying eggs under their toe-nails. The porters were often very good companions but a camel could keep me warm on a freezing desert night if I had smeared enough kerosene over my body to keep its greedy parasitical ticks away. I ended those days of West African bush travel with great respect for the cheerfulness and stoic qualities of the porter, but with an unreserved admiration for the camel.

  John Hare’s singular passion was the wild two-humped camel, known as the Bactrian, which had become the eighth most endangered large mammal on the planet by the mid-1990s. It inhabited the Gobi Desert of north-west China and Mongolia, with a population numbering little more than a thousand.

  A couple of years previously, John had received permission to enter China’s former nuclear test site in the Gobi, where the wild Bactrian camel survives. No foreigner had been allowed to enter this vast, isolated desert area for forty-five years. Extraordinarily, the wild camel had survived forty-three atmospheric nuclear tests. It had also managed to survive on the salty, brackish water of the desert.

  This is why I always say that if there’s ever a nuclear holocaust or a meteor hits us, there are only three things that will survive: cockroaches, Keith Richards and camels. Everything else is rooted.

  John had just established the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, with the renowned Jane Goodall as its patron. This was the British aristocracy of wildlife preservation. Jane Goodall had a neat phrase to sum up their unique joint venture: ‘We are both basically creatures of the wild places and only leave them to save them.’ Other patrons held titles from another age, such as the Marchioness of Bute, the Countess of Chichester and the Dowager Marchioness of Reading. They represented the old networks, which had the influence to tap into England’s old moneyed class.

  John and I first started talking via email. Though coming at it from very different directions, we shared both a passion and the aim of wanting to save endangered camel species. To both of us it seemed that the embryo transfer work I’d been doing might be if not the whole solution, then a good part of it. It was a proven technique for multiplying the breeding capacity. Given my interest in the endangered Bactrian camels of Mongolia, I thought this was perfect.

  On meeting John in person I understood immediately what a massive concession to the modern age it had been for him to use this new-fangled thing called the internet to send an email. He came to stay with us in Al Ain. A tall, weather-beaten man, he lived up to the caricature of the great British explorer. He was already in his sixties but clearly had no plans to settle down in leafy Kent and see out his days in gentle retirement. Far from it. He was a fount of stories, and yet more adventures lay ahead of him.

  John was in his late fifties when he made his early expeditions into the Mongolian Gobi and the Chinese Lop Desert and Gashun Gobi region, in search of the Bactrian camels. We often throw around the word ‘epic’, but in John’s case
it is the right description of the incredible trip he made. The Gobi is without doubt one of the world’s harshest environments.

  John and his team of locals endured more than a month out in that utterly unforgiving terrain, a barren, windblown moonscape where temperatures drop far below freezing point. He was the first foreigner ever to venture into these areas. He explained that, though in the company of a team, he actually preferred to travel by himself. And this man of another age had a rule that he would never carry a mobile phone on these journeys.

  John’s passion for the camel had come later in life but, having discovered it, he had more and more plans afoot to travel to ever more remote zones. He was already mulling over an expedition across the Sahara Desert, a venture which would take three and a half months to cover almost 2500 kilometres by camel. The route would follow an ancient camel route, notorious in the days of slavery as a road of extreme hardship and death. The last person to make the crossing was the Swiss explorer Hanns Vischer in 1906.

  John was married, though with his many trips away he must have barely seen his wife and family. When he came to stay with us in Al Ain he brought along an old friend from Africa named Jasper Evans.

  Jasper, too, was charming company and, if anything, even more of a camel nut than John. An Englishman who had lived most of his life in Kenya, Jasper had fixed a metal camel weathervane on top of his house in the Kenyan countryside, emblematic of the spirit that dwelt within. While John was the essence of English reserve, Jasper was a totally different proposition and more in the mould of the Kenyan cow-cockie. He was a short, energetic man who would turn up with a bottle of whisky for a long night of stories and jokes.