Edward Pritchard Gee
Edward Pritchard Gee (1904–1968) was a Cambridge educated, Anglo-Indian tea-planter and an amateur naturalist in Assam, India. He is credited with the 1953 discovery of Gee's golden langur. He is notable as an early influential wildlife conservationist, especially for his 1959 and 1963 surveys and recommendations resulting in the creation of Chitwan National Park, the first of nine national parks in Nepal. Conservationist. Gee was the fourth son of Rev. C. G. Gee, Vicar of Lowick and his wife, daughter of a Colonel Briggs of Hylton Castle. As a tea planter, Gee was part  of a highly influential group of British landowners very close to the highest levels of provincial power. Soon after India's Independence, Gee was one of the first to assess the threats to endangered species and outline conservation measures to protect them. He believed cattle had no place in a sanctuary and thought they would arouse a sense of surprise, disappointment, and revulsion in tourists who had come looking for wild animals. Like his contemporaries, Salim Ali and M. Krishnan, Gee was a non-official member of the Indian Board for Wildlife, the apex body that advises the Union Government  on wildlife matters. Gee argued in favour of separate wildlife wardens within the Forest Department, who have specific powers in relation to fauna. He wrote extensively on the role of foresters as protectors of wildlife, as he thought it important to rely on their goodwill. He believed conservation success depended on cooperation between foresters and the forest ministers of each state and that the role of the central government was only to advise and assist. He is famous for his discovery of the langur species which is named after him, Gee's golden langur. He had heard reports of an  unusual coloured primate and he organised an expedition in 1953. He managed to film the langurs near the Sankosh River on the border between Assam and Bhutan. He recommended that the Govindgarh Palace of the Maharaja of Rewa, and its white tiger inhabitants, be made a "National Trust", which didn't happen. In 1959, the Fauna Preservation Society appointed E.P. Gee to undertake a survey of the Chitwan Valley. Gee, who had spent most of his life in India and was an authority on its wildlife, recommended creation of a national park north of the Rapti River. He also proposed  creation of a wildlife sanctuary south of the river for a trial period of ten years. In 1963, after he surveyed Chitwan again, this time for both the Fauna Preservation Society and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gee recommended extension of the national park to rhinoceros areas to the south of the river. In December 1970, His Majesty King Mahendra approved extension of the national park as recommended, thus creating the first national park in Nepal. After retirement from tea planting in Assam, Gee settled in Shillong, where he assembled one of the finest private orchid collections. After  Independence, sensitive to the nationalism of the new Indian leadership, Gee searched for and emphasized indigenous nature conservation practices, ranging from ancient imperial edicts to village traditions of protecting nesting bird colonies. This cooperative and culturally sensitive style won recognition from Jawaharlal Nehru whom Gee accompanied together with Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi and son-in-law Feroze Gandhi on a tour of Kaziranga Wildlife Sanctuary on 20 October 1956. Nehru's forward to Gee's book in February 1964 was one of the only pieces he ever wrote on wildlife conservation. In it he said, Nehru called for more  refuges for vanishing wildlife, but he died in May and Gee died four years later. It was the end of an era.