John Hare (conservationist) place of birth Bexhill-on-Sea
Life and career
Hare was born in Bexhill, Kent on 11 December 1934. His interest in wildlife conservation began when he served in the north of colonial Nigeria, first as an army officer assigned to the Royal West African Frontier Force and later in the Colonial Service.In 1993, John Hare was offered by a Russian exploration team to research the status of the wild Bactrian camel in Mongolia, a critically endangered species of camel. It only survives in the Gobi Desert. In 1994, he presented his findings at an international conference in Ulan-Bator.
in 1995 he received permission to enter Lop Nur, the first foreigner to get such permission in 45 years. Lop Nur was also the natural habitat of the wild Bactrian camel and also a former nuclear testing site. The wild Bactrian camels are also able to tolerate salt water with a higher salt content than sea water, explaining their residence in Lop Nur. He undertook expeditions in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999 to Lop Nur. In 1995 he became the first foreigner in recorded history to cross the Gashun Gobi Desert from north to south.
In 1997, John Hare with Kathryn Rae founded the Wild Camel Protection Foundation, a UK registered charity. The foundation proposed the establishment of the Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve in Xinjiang Province in the former nuclear test site, to which the Chinese government later agreed. The WCPF became responsible for helping the Chinese to establish one of the largest nature reserves in the world, protecting not only the wild Bactrian camel but many other IUCN Red Book listed endangered fauna and flora. John Hare was the sole international consultant for the Reserve.
Between 2001 and 2002 Hare crossed the Sahara Desert from Lake Chad to Tripoli, a journey of 1500 miles, which lasted 3.5 months, to raise awareness for the wild camel. This route had not been followed in its entirety by a foreigner for 100 years. This journey was undertaken to raise funding and awareness of the plight of the wild camel.
In 2006 John Hare made the first recorded complete circling by camel of Lake Turkana (Rudolph), in Kenya. This involved swimming 22 camels across River Omo in Ethiopia.
In 2005 and 2006 he made two more expeditions into the Chinese and Mongolian Gobi deserts, on domestic Bactrian camels. In 2004 the WCPF established the Hunter Hall Captive Wild Camel Breeding Centre at Zakhyn Us in Mongolia, housing twelve wild camels, which had been rescued from being captured by Mongolian herdsmen. This is the only place in the world where the wild camel is held in captivity apart from two zoos in China. In 2010 the population had increased to twenty-five. The Veterinary University of Vienna published a paper after 5 years of genetic tests on samples from these camels, stating that they were of a previously unknown species of camel which separated from any other known form of camel over 700,000 years ago and was different from the Bactrian camel. The findings of this paper were accepted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature which listed the wild camel (Camelus ferus) as critically endangered.
In 2013 and 2015 two successful translocations of wild camels were made from the Mongolian Wild camel Breeding Centre into the Gobi Desert.
John Hare was also the author of various books, such as The Fearless Four series and various books relating to his travels in the Gobi and the Sahara.He died on 28 January 2022, at the age of 87.
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