Resources for Teachers and Students on Richard Leakey
Prepare: The son of two of the past century's foremost
paleoanthropologists, Richard Leakey has continued in his
parents' legacy as a fossil-hunter, although his career
also turned to conservation, and he once held a political
appointment as Minister for the Environment of Kenya. His
biography,
as well as those of his family, can be found on the website
of The Leakey Foundation.
Read:
Richard Leakey's short Architects
of Peace essay is excepted from his book The Sixth Extinction:
Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind, co-authored
with Roger Lewin. In it, he voices a concern that our solutions
to the environmental crisis may ultimately have the effect
of freezing "the citizens of less-developed nations
in permanent poverty."
Explore: One of Richard Leakey's major efforts as
a conservationist, during his tenure as director of the
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), was the program to curtail
the poaching of wild elephants, which were seriously endangered.
He wrote about this effort in the 2001 book, Wildlife Wars:
My Battle to Save Kenya's Elephants. The KWS
elephant conservation program is an on-going effort,
and the status of the struggle against poaching can be explored
online.
Write: In his Architects of Peace essay, Richard
Leakey suggests that finding ways to exploit natural resources
in a sustainable way is humanity's greatest challenge. If
this is the case, what is the relationship between efforts
to achieve global peace and efforts to achieve the sustainable
development of scarce natural resources? Does one of these
efforts merit greater priority than the other? Will it ultimately
be possible to achieve either task without also achieving
the other? Write a two-to-three page persuasive essay on
the complex relationship between peace and sustainable development.
Extend: Richard Leakey has long been considered
a controversial figure, one whom the BBC News likened to
an "ageing Indiana Jones minus the bullwhip."
His involvement in Kenyan politics has cost him dearly:
an airplane crash that is suspected to have been caused
by sabotage resulted in the loss of both of Leakey's legs.
Please visit the BBC
profile highlighting the controversial side of Richard
Leakey's career.
Additional Resource: In 2003 the Radio Expeditions
program, co-produced by the National Geographic Society
and National Public Radio, broadcast "The
Legacy of Louis Leakey,"; which explored the
tremendous impact the Leakey family has had on the field
of anthropology.
Biography of Richard
Leakey
