JOIN USThe book ‘Tilo’s Troops: Handiwork of a Primatologist in Vietnam’, authored by Dr Murali Pai of Mangaluru, was released by Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) Vice Chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat at Manipal Centre for European Studies (MCES) on Friday.
It is published by Manipal Universal Press (MUP).
Dr Neeta Inamdar, chief editor, MUP, welcomed the gathering and spoke briefly about the author and how MUP got about publishing the book.
Dr Madhukar Pai, Professor, McGill University, Canada and Sreedevi who copyedited the book were felicitated on the occasion.
Dr Murali Pai is the editor of African Conservation Telegraph (ACT), a wildlife biologist, a veterinarian and a writer on environmental issues. He has travelled widely across India, US, China, Ethiopia and Bhutan on different conservation projects.
He has dedicated the book to world’s foremost taxonomist and biological anthropologist, late Colin Groves, who has also written the foreword to the book.
The book narrates the story of Tilo Nadler, a German welder-turned-air-conditioning engineer, photographer and a biologist.
It talks about Tilo’s experiences in Vietnam, where he had gone in 1993 to the train forest staff in Cuc Phuong National Park to secure the Park from poachers, hunters and vandals.
Within two months of his arrival there, he was tasked with the responsibility of launching a rehabilitation centre for endangered primates and was given two sub adult male Delacour’s langurs, a rare, endemic and critically endangered primate species to take care of.
He ended up founding Endangered Primate Rescue Centre, one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Dr Murali Pai had met Tilo in Vietnam.