John L. Behler, 62, Dies; Influential Voice for Saving Reptiles
By
JEREMY PEARCE
Published: February 5, 2006
John L. Behler, a naturalist and curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo who became an influential and international voice for saving endangered turtles, snakes and other reptiles, died on Jan. 31 at his home in Amawalk, N.Y. He was 62.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his family said.
Mr. Behler made impassioned efforts to preserve rare species of tortoises in Madagascar as well as turtles and alligators in China, even as he advocated for less colorful creatures found in ponds and bogs in New York State.
In the early 1990's, he warned about an increasing trade of wild Asian turtles in China, where they are prized as food and in preparing traditional medicines. At the time, the Chinese had been importing turtles from Thailand, Indonesia and even the United States. Mr. Behler, while chairman of the World Conservation Union's tortoise and freshwater turtle specialist group, argued against the practice and pushed for the opening of turtle farms in China to supply the growing commercial market.
Anders Rhodin, current chairman of the conservation union's turtle group, said that Mr. Behler's "clarion call about the crisis in Asia made him a hero in turtle conservation" and led to reforms and a reversal of fortune in recent years. The Chinese now cultivate roughly 70 percent to 80 percent of the turtles sold at market.
Previously, in the 1980's, he had studied the plight of the alligator in China, where fewer than 100 were thought to survive in the wild. He brought Chinese alligators to the Bronx Zoo and helped foster a program to breed them in captivity and create a register to safeguard their genetic diversity.
Mr. Behler, whose interests in the natural world were nurtured while collecting snakes and butterflies in boyhood, also researched the tortoises of Madagascar. He tracked the island's radiated tortoises using radiotelemetry, and in the past decade helped establish preserves to protect them. The species has been under threat from smuggling to supply the pet trade.
At the Bronx Zoo, where he had been curator of herpetology since 1976, he oversaw the care and display of about 125 species that include salamanders, turtles and snakes. He collected rare frogs in Africa and South America, and, with F. Wayne King, wrote a reference book that remains in wide use, the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians (1979).
John Luther Behler was born in Allentown, Pa. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Miami and his master's degree in biological sciences from East Stroudsburg University.
After briefly teaching biology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, he joined the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, in 1970. Mr. Behler is survived by his wife of 28 years, Debbie, who collaborated with him in writing nature books and is an editor for the Wildlife Conservation Society. A previous marriage ended in divorce.
He is also survived by a daughter, Cindy Sibilia of Basking Ridge, N.J.; a son, David, of Brewster, N.Y.; his mother, Mildred, of Bethlehem, Pa.; a sister, Judy Howells of Pacific Palisades, Calif.; and five grandchildren.
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