Edward Pritchard Gee

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,

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.

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.