A Desert Haven for the Endangered

The meerkat stood on top of the mound, swiveling its head and watching through what look like kohl-ringed eyes. The meerkat is an animal about 14 inches tall that stands with its back straight as a ruler, steadying itself with its tail firmly planted behind it.

This one was the sentry for the group, standing vigilant against hawks and other raptors that might swoop down and break up what seemed to be a service club meeting of the rest of the meerkats. They are sociable, clubby little animals from North Africa. They stand straight, their haunches taut, their forepaws in front of them, wrists gracefully dropped in proper ballet position.

These meerkats were in the Living Desert, a wildlife and botanical park in Palm Desert in the Coachella Valley. The desert zoo-park was founded in 1970 by Karen Sausman, a dark-eyed, slender naturalist, zoologist and practical dreamer who determined to preserve the delicate ecology of the desert and its disappearing inhabitants. She is one of the rare women who can wear well-tailored trousers, a taupe silk blouse and a bush hat and not look as if she were costumed for a remake of “Mogambo.”

The Living Desert has 1,200 acres that Sausman and her board have bought, leased, wheedled and charmed for their sandy sanctuary. The Living Desert owns 140 acres and the rest of the land is leased from government agencies, notably the Coachella Water District and the Bureau of Land Management.

The Living Desert is parceled into replicas of 10 North American desert areas. Lately, an African desert landscape has been added.

The local desert scene has a kish, a Cahuilla Indian house made of palm branches that hold the stone mortar and pestle equipment, the food processor of the women putting together a meal from what the hunters and gatherers brought back. The Cahuilla Indians, native to this part of the desert, had the heat problem solved. In the winter they lived on the flat land; in summer they packed up their children and the food processor and went up the mountain to Idyllwild and spent the hot months beneath the cool pine trees.

The Living Desert’s Sonoran pond and its banks are home to 1,000 kinds of plants. Many of these are as delicate as Brussels lace, and in the spring they burst with colors from the delicate pink of a seashell to the flaming red of a torch.

A lot of the birds and animals are brought to the Living Desert because they are orphans or have been wounded. We saw a golden eagle that was an orphan and also had a wing problem, so it will not be returned to the open spaces. But it seemed content with its lot, perched on its own tree, peering at us with austere eyes.

The Living Desert has done a noteworthy job with the antelope family. Kirk’s dik-dik is a timid, small African creature that doesn’t look as if it could last two minutes in the open. It almost didn’t. Some of the lucky ones live safely in the Living Desert.

In the care center, watched over by the Living Desert’s full-time veterinarian, Dr. Virginia Skinner, was a Cuvier’s gazelle from North Africa and a ward full of animals and birds recuperating in fine style.

One was a golden-breasted starling, which, like Lord Byron’s Assyrian cohorts, was gleaming in purple and gold. Its family lives in the Sonoran Desert, which straddles northern Mexico and southern Arizona.

There is a thick-billed parrot on display that zips up and down the mesh wire of its cage using a bill over foot motion that enables it to move fast, flashing a green and black face and the red tops of its wings.

An endearing fellow about a hand-span high is the burrowing owl that lives on the ground and intrepidly hunts by day. It takes over the vacated burrows of foxes and coyotes and can turn its head 270 degrees. A good thing, too, considering its reckless way of living.

Lou Feiring, who showed my friend Jean and me through the Living Desert, changed my entire outlook on vultures with one sentence. He said, “They are nature’s sanitation engineers.”

The eagles, hawks and the scarlet-faced caracara bird, the national bird of Mexico, are among the residents.

Bighorn sheep stood or lounged on their craggy mountain. There are sand cats that are critically endangered. Lou said there are only 13 in North America. They are about as big as a large domestic cat, with ears big enough to fly with.

The fennec fox, the kit fox, the endangered slender horned gazelle and Mhorr’s gazelle all have comfortable and authentic homes at the Living Desert. Two newcomers are a pair of endangered Grevey’s zebras. Coyotes and dozens more desert dwellers make the tour a treat.

There will be 200,000 visitors to the Living Desert in 1990, and in late fall, Sausman said they will break ground for another large exhibit called Eagle Canyon that will house larger animals, among them the beleaguered mountain lion.

I was so enchanted with the meerkats, I adopted one, which means I pay a portion of its care and feeding for a year.