H. Vinod Bhat, Vice-Chancellor, MAHE, released Tilo’s Troops: Handiwork of a Primatologist in Vietnam, yet another publication from the Manipal Universal Press at Manipal Centre for European Studies (MCES) here recently.

The book is authored by Murali Pai of Mangaluru.

According to a release issued here on Friday, Dr. Murali Pai is the Editor of the African Conservation Telegraph (ACT), a wildlife biologist, a veterinarian and an environmental writer. He has travelled widely across India, the U.S., China, Ethiopia and Bhutan for various conservation projects.

He has dedicated the book to the world’s foremost taxonomist and biological anthropologist, the late Colin Groves, who also wrote the foreword to the book.

The book narrates the story of Tilo Nadler, a German welder turned air-conditioning engineer, photographer and biologist. It talks about Tilo’s experiences in Vietnam where he had gone in 1993 to train foresters 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 starting a rehabilitation centre for endangered primates and was given two sub-adult male Delacour langurs, a rare, endemic and critically endangered primate species to take care of. He ended up founding one of the largest endangered primate rescue centres in the world. Dr. Murali Pai met Tilo in Vietnam.