Richard Leakey

File:Richard Leakey on Time.jpg

In 1977, Richard Leakey was featured on the cover of Time Magazine.

Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (born 19 December 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya), is a Kenyan 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.

Early life

Earliest years

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 participated in jumping and steeplechase competitions but often 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 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.

Broken leg

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.

Duke of York Secondary School

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. 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, spat 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: return 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.

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 paleontology. 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. They explored in the vicinity of Peninj near the lake. Richard was in charge of the administrative details. Bored, he returned to Nairobi temporarily, but Kimoya Kameu chose that moment to discover a fossil of Australopithecus boisei. A second expedition left Richard feeling that he was being excluded from the most significant part of the operation, the scientific analysis.

Marriage to Margaret Cropper

In 1964 on his second Lake Natron expedition, Richard met an archaeologist named Margaret Cropper. On her return to England he decided to go to England to study for a degree and get further acquainted with Margaret. He completed his high school requirements in six months; meanwhile Margaret obtained her degree at the University of Edinburgh. He passed the entrance exams for admission to college, but he and Margaret decided to get married and return to Kenya in 1965. His father offered him a job at Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology. He worked for it excavating at Lake Baringo and also continued a photographic safari business, making enough money to buy a house in Karen, a nice suburb of Nairobi.

Paleontology

Richard’s career as a palaeoanthropologist did not begin with a dateable event or a sudden decision, as did Louis’; he was with his parents on every excavation, was taught every skill and was given responsible work even as a boy. It is not surprising that his independent decision-making led him into conflict with his father, who had always tried to instill in him that very capability. After he gave some fossils to Tanzania and set Margaret to inventorying Louis’ collections, Louis suggested he find work elsewhere in 1967.

Richard formed the Kenya Museum Associates with influential Kenyans in that year. Their intent was to Kenyanize and improve the National Museum. They offered the museum 5000 pounds, 1/3 of its yearly budget, if it would place Richard in a responsible position. He was given an observer’s seat on the board of directors. Joel Ojal, the government official in charge of the museum, and a member of the Associates, directed the chairman of the board to start placing Kenyans on it. Currently ,(amidst several other projects) Richard Leakey is a visiting professor of Human Evolution and Conservation at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The Omo

Plans for the museum had not matured when Louis found a way to remove his confrontational son from the scene, whether intentional or not. Louis attended a lunch with Haile Selassie and Jomo Kenyatta. The conversation turned to fossils and Haile wanted to know why none had been found in Ethiopia. Louis developed this sentiment into permission to excavate on the Omo River.

The expedition consisted of three contingents: a French, under Camille Arambourg, an American, under Clark Howell, and a Kenyan, led by Richard. Louis could not go because of arthritis. Crossing the Omo in 1967, Richard’s contingent was attacked by crocodiles. They bit the wooden boat into uselessness. Expedition members barely escaped with their lives. Richard radioed Louis for a new, aluminum boat, which the National Geographic Society was happy to purchase.

On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a Hominid fossil. Richard took it to be Homo erectus, but Louis identified it as Homo sapiens. It was the oldest of the species found at that time, dating to 160,000 ya, and was the first contemporaneous with Homo neanderthalensis. During the identification process Richard came to feel that the college men were patronizing him.

Koobi Fora

During the Omo expedition of 1967, Richard visited Nairobi and on the return flight the pilot flew over Lake Rudolph (now Lake Turkana) to avoid a thunderstorm. The map led Richard to expect volcanic rock below him but he saw sediments. Visiting the region with Howell by helicopter, he saw tools and fossils everywhere. In his mind, he was already formulating a new enterprise.

In 1968 Louis and Richard attended a meeting of the Research and Exploration Committee of the National Geographic Society to ask for money for Omo. Catching Louis by surprise, Richard asked the committee to divert the $25,000 intended for Omo to new excavations to be conducted under his leadership at Koobi Fora. Richard won, but chairman Leonard Carmichael told him he'd better find something or never "come begging at our door again." Louis graciously congratulated Richard.

More was yet to come. By now the board of the National Museum was packed with Kenyan supporters of Richard. They appointed him administrative director. The curator, Robert Carcasson, resigned in protest and Richard was left with the museum at his command, which he, like Louis before him, used as a base of operations. Although there was friendly rivalry and contention between Louis and Richard, relations remained good. Each took over for the other when one was busy with something else or incapacitated, and Richard continued to inform his father immediately of Hominid finds.

In the first expedition to Allia Bay on Lake Turkana, where the Koobi Fora camp came to be located, Richard hired only graduate students in anthropology, as he did not want any questioning of his leadership. The students were John Harris and Bernard Wood. Also present was a team of Africans under Kamoya, a geochemist: Paul Abel, and a photographer: Bob Campbell. Margaret was the archaeologist. Richard took to smoking a pipe to enhance his status, and so did Kamoya. There were no leadership problems. In contrast to his father, Richard ran a disciplined and tidy camp, although he did push the expedition harder than it wished to find fossils.

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.

Richard's wife Meave Leakey and daughter Louise Leakey still continue paleontological research in Northern Kenya.

West Turkana

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).

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.

In 2004, Richard Leakey founded and chaired WildlifeDirect, a Kenya-based charitable organization. The charity was established to provide support to conservationists in Africa directly on the ground via the use of blogs. This enables individuals anywhere to play a direct and interactive role in the survival of some of the world’s most precious species. The organisation played a significant role in the saving of Congo's mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park in January 2007 after a rebel uprising threatened to eliminate the highly vulnerable population.

Politics

In May 1995 Richard Leakey joined a group of Kenyan intellectuals in launching a new political party - the Safina Party which ironically in Swahili means "Noah's Ark." "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.

In April 2007 he was appointed interim chairman of Transparency International Kenya branch .

Bibliography

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.

• 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)

See also

• Leakey family
• List of fossil sites (with link directory)
• List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)

External links

• Leakey Foundation
• Talk Origins - Richard Leakey
• Leakey
• KFRP
• Time: Leakey
• Leakey
• Leakey Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
• Biography resources dedicated to Richard, Louis and Mary Leakey
• WildlifeDirect