Why Anna is a wild one

EXOTIC animals don't scare Anna Evely. She picks up corn snakes and blue-tongued skinks as though they are favourite pets, has ridden elephants, taken close-up photos of yawning crocodiles, and stroked dolphins in the seas off New Zealand.

But a close-up encounter with a leopard in the jungles of northern Thailand was a bit much even for her.

They were walking through thick jungle when her guide stooped and pointed. Leopard droppings, he said, using just about the only English words he had.

As an animal expert who lectures on conservation and animal management at Askham Bryan College, Anna's first reaction was to think about taking a photo. Then her guide spoke again. Fresh leopard droppings, he said.

Anna pauses for effect. "And then we realised that in the thick jungle to our right were two gleaming eyes," she says.

It was the leopard, watching them, its eyes shining in the faint, reflected light that had filtered through the jungle canopy.

Anna, who was on a placement with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Wildlife Friends of Thailand, was properly equipped for jungle exploration. She even had a gun slung over her shoulder, Lara Croft-style. "The only problem was I didn't know what to do with it!" she says. "I just hoped somebody else did."

Fortunately, the leopard was even more scared of them than they were of it. "It turned and ran," says Anna. Which is usually the best policy for any four-footed creature encountering the world's most dangerous predator: man.

Anna is York's own Lara Croft, an animal-loving action girl who tramps the world's wild spots working on conservation projects and wild animal rescue and rehabilitation schemes.

At 23, the former Huntington School pupil - daughter of York council highways boss Peter Evely - is already a lecturer in Animal Management at Askham Bryan College. She is now in the middle of a sabbatical year which she is spending doing research for her Masters degree in biodiversity and conservation. It's this that is taking her all over the world.

Last October, she flew out to New Zealand to spend six weeks working with the country's Department of Conservation, collecting data on population levels and migratory routes of sperm whales, killer whales and Hector's dolphins.

Hector's dolphins, she says, are the rarest dolphins in the world. About the size of a dog, they are intelligent and friendly - so friendly you can stroke them while they are in the water. This, however, could be their downfall. "They are under threat because people can pick them up out of the water and put them in their pool," says Anna.

After a few weeks back in York, Anna embarked at the beginning of last October on the next leg of her global travels.

She spent six months in northern Thailand, working on animal rehabilitation and rescue projects. Her job, with the WWF and the Wildlife Friends of Thailand, was to rescue captive bears, monkeys, tigers and elephants and try to rehabilitate them ready for life back in the wild.

She saw some harrowing sights: a baby Malaysian sun bear named Pinder which had been reared in captivity on a totally inappropriate diet (meat and even chocolate instead of fruit) which left him bloated and overweight; and a stump-tailed macaque, which was forced to perform for the public dressed in a tutu.

Most moving of all, however, were the elephants. She'd never been interested in elephants until she saw them close up: then she found herself falling suddenly and unexpectedly in love.

"They are so huge, so gentle and intelligent," she says. "I got the chance to ride on them - and they help you up by holding out their legs. They make a kind of step for you with their leg."

Tourists pay good money to ride elephants in northern Thailand. The problem, says Anna - whose own elephant ride was in the interests of research - is that the huge, gentle creatures are stolen from the wild and are often mistreated while they are being trained. "And as soon as they die, the keepers go back into the forest to get another one."

Much of the cruelty to animals she witnessed in Thailand was due to ignorance, which is why education of local people is so important, she says. Not all Thais are cruel to animals, however. Most of the animal rescues she took part in came after tip-offs from concerned Thai people.

Smaller animals - sun bears, monkeys and macaques - can be rehabilitated at rescue centres with the hope of returning them to the wild.

The aim, Anna says, is to help them relearn their natural behaviour and feeding habits so they can survive in the wild. The first stage is for them to be kept in isolation. They are can be moved into gradually bigger cages so they can learn to mix with other animals of their own species.

The final step is to release them on to a jungle-covered island that is as near to their natural habitat as possible, before finally they are ready to be released into the wild.

With elephants, that is not really possible, however. They are so gentle and so tame, Anna says, they would be likely to walk straight up to the first poacher they encountered if released back into the wild. So all the rescue teams can do is look after them and treat them as well as possible.

Anna returned from Thailand before Christmas, and after a few more weeks in York is now in Nepal on the next phase of her global tour. There - despite the declaration of a state of emergency following a palace coup - she is studying elephants again, and also Bengal tigers, Asian rhino and red pandas.

Next on her global itinerary is China (two months in April studying giant pandas) and then she will be flying out to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands - famous for the way they helped Charles Darwin arrive at his theory of evolution - in the summer.

She will be studying rainforest conservation in Ecuador. And in the Galapagos? "I've been teaching evolution, and feel I should go there and see what Darwin saw," she says.

Someone's got to do it, I suppose.

Anna's arrival in Nepal coincided with the seizure of power by King Nyanendra on February 1. He sacked the government, put politicians under house arrest and declared a state of emergency.

Anna's father, York highways boss Peter Evely, admitted he had become worried after not hearing from his daughter. But she has now managed to make a telephone call to let her family know she's OK.

"She was on a trek up Everest to work with red pandas," he said. "I'm just happy to know she's there and she's safe and the country is calm."

Updated: 09:22 Saturday, February 12, 2005