Valerius Geist: a global leader in deer biology and conservation

The year 2021 was cruel to the entire globe. It will be remembered for its innumerable deaths, in no small part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the legendary figures who died that year, science lost a stellar pioneering researcher, a giant among his peers for his brilliant innovative thinking and myriad contributions to the field of big mammal ecology and behavioural evolution. Professor Doctor Valerius Geist (1938–2021), the famed scientist and prolific writer on ungulates and wild canid species, passed away from heart failure on 6 July 2021, at the age of 83 in Port Alberni, British Columbia. In this special edition of Animal Production Science, we would like to pay tribute to this exceptional intellectual of our times (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Professor Valerius Geist, a world-renowned deer biologist, who contributed many significant concepts to the science of deer conservation.

Dr Geist’s early days inevitably shaped the man he was to become. In what is today the war-ravaged town of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, he was born on 2 February 1938 as Valery Shutov. Mykolaiv, also known as Nikolaev, was then part of the former Soviet Union. While a small child, Valerius lost his father fighting in WWII. He then fled to Austria and Germany, changing his family name to that of his mother (Olga Geist), before eventually settling in Canada with his mother in 1953. Eight years later, he married his life partner, Renate, with whom he would raise three children, Rosemarie, Karl and Harold.

From an early age, Valerius held a desire to be a zoologist. He received two zoology degrees at the University of British Columbia, a BSc (with Honours) and a PhD, in 1960 and 1967, respectively. He spent 4 years in the field from 1961 to 1965 studying bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis, and completed his doctoral thesis ‘On the behaviour and evolution of American mountain sheep’ (which became a bestselling book when adapted and published by Geist (1971a)) under the mentorship of famed Canadian ecologist Ian McTaggart-Cowan (1910–2010). Continuing onto the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology in Germany (1967–1968) under the legendary ‘father of ethology’, Konrad Lorenz, this postdoctoral experience further shaped Dr Geist’s research approach. This was evident in his ongoing interest in describing, with texts and detailed drawings, myriad behavioural patterns (e.g. dominance, submission, courtship displays, and urination postures). Such work requires very acute perception, and the ability to observe and distinguish the different innate behavioural displays, to build the so-called ‘ethogram’, and to describe a repertoire of behavioural patterns, an approach that unfortunately is almost totally abandoned today. He was able to note, for example, subtle but fundamental differences in the mouth posture of European red deer and North American elk (aka wapiti, Cervus elaphus spp. and Cervus canadensis, respectively) during the rutting call, in the neck and antler posture of the adult males of these two species during herding and courtship, and in the urination posture of females (Geist 1982, 1998). His drawings, while essential, were always precise, and at the same time elegant.

Dr Geist’s great passion and unique form of studying the animal kingdom largely emanated from his early career exposure to animal ethology. Valerius was to become a pioneer in field ethology, the study of animal behaviour in their natural environment. He belonged to a very small group of young zoologists who in the early 1960s decided to study animals in their habitats (e.g. G. B. Schaller is only 5 years older than Geist; J. Goodall four).

Valerius’ long productive career included countless scientific papers, policy reports, commentaries and 23 books, including ‘Deer of the World: their Evolution, Behaviour and Ecology’ (1998). This book, with more than 1300 scientific references, is widely considered to be the authoritative reference for deer researchers, scientists, hunters, game managers and wildlife watchers. All his books on bighorns, mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus), deer, wapiti, pronghorns (Antilocapra americana) and bison (Bison bison) are a mixture of science and passion, a good representation of what Valerius (popularly known as Val) was for many of us, a passionate and open-minded scientist full of curiosity and enthusiasm, following a very personal and unique way. His idea of science, particularly that of wildlife biology, was really inclusive, something that could and should interest professionals, amateurs, hunters, game managers, or, better still, the whole of society.

Dr Geist’s professional career included teaching at the University of Calgary (1977–1994), where he became a founding member and first Program Director of Environmental Science in the Faculty of Environmental Design. Later, he became Associate Dean and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1994. For the remaining years of his life, he resided on Vancouver Island, BC, from where he continued to contribute to ungulate science and management by enthusiastically sharing his expertise.

His honours included the Wilderness Defenders Award from the Alberta Wilderness Association (2004), and professional honorary memberships in both the Boone and Crockett Club and its European counterpart, the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (Conseil International de la Chasse).

One of Val’s greatest lifetime accomplishments involved defining the core principles that have made wildlife management unique in North America (Geist 1995, 2006; Geist et al. 2001; Heffelfinger et al. 2013; Mahoney and Geist 2019), for which he is now considered the Father of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Organ et al. (2012) noted that Geist had refined it to the seven key principles by 1995. His being an avid hunter, who had lived on both the European and North American continents, allowed him to make unique comparisons of the wildlife conservation/management systems of both cultures, based on very distinct hunting traditions. As he remarked, he did not invent the North American model. Instead, he was the one who identified and described the core principles.

We ungulate biologists should mostly remember Val for his many contributed theories, like that of Pleistocene evolution of cervids and bovids, the so-called ‘glaciation or dispersal theory’ (Geist 1971b, 1978). Through his research on wild sheep and deer, he was able to observe that within strictly related species or subspecies there are differences in the development of ‘social organs’ (e.g. ornaments such as horns, antlers, manes, beards, rump patches, tails, and colour patterns of the coat) (Geist 1971a, 1971b, 1987a, 1987b, 1998). Some subspecies are more ‘conservative’, smaller-sized, less differentiated, and less showy, and live close to glacial refugia or origin points, whereas others are more ‘advanced’, morphologically more extreme, larger-sized, and with larger and more spectacular ornaments and have dispersed far from their original refugia colonising unoccupied superabundant habitats. Through this in-depth analysis, he distinguished ‘maintenance or efficiency phenotypes’ versus ‘dispersal or luxury phenotypes’ (inter aliaGeist 1987a and 1987b). Furthermore, in many of his papers, Val emphasised the important role of ‘phenotypic plasticity’ (inter aliaGeist 1974, 1978, 1989), i.e. the high flexibility of ungulates in terms of growth, body size and social organs related to the abundance of food resources. This ecological high adaptability can be genetically fixed, producing populations, subspecies or species with more advanced features (cf. Geist 1998). Western red deer from Europe and wapiti from Siberia and North America (Cervus canadensis spp.) are two clear examples of advanced elaphine deer, with more showy social organs (e.g. supernumerary crowns and large manes in the first species, compared with very long antlers and coats with contrasting colours in the latter), whereas sika (C. nippon), central Asian deer (e.g. Bukhara, Tarim, and hangul subspecies, now gathered under the central Asian deer C. hanglu species), Manchurian wapiti (C. c. xanthopygus) and Tibetan wapiti (C. c. wallichi) are good examples of primitive or conservative forms. Noting the strong similarity of present wapiti and moose (Alces alces) from Siberia with those of North America, Dr Geist (1998) favoured the hypothesis of a relatively recent arrival in America for both species (15 000 years ago). And as ancient DNA analysis recently demonstrated (Meiri et al. 2014, 2020), he was absolutely right.

Dr Geist was fascinated by the Pleistocene extinct giant cervids such as the Gallic moose (Libralces gallicus), broad-fronted moose (Cervalces latifrons), the Scott’s stag-moose and above all the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus), wrongly known also as Irish elk. He was one of the first to relate the giant deer to fallow deer (Dama dama; Geist 1987a, 1987b, 1998), which was only recently demonstrated by geneticists and paleontologists (Lister et al. 2005). He dedicated a whole chapter of his monograph about cervids to this species, speculating on its size, mobility, and habitat preferences (Geist 1998).

Dr Geist also had a strong interest in paleoanthropology, and before passing away he was finishing a book on art in human prehistory.

Val was not afraid to advocate for unpopular topics, such as his warning that deer ranching in North America would one day spell disaster for wild populations by spreading disease (Geist 1988, 1992). That was before chronic wasting disease (CWD) came to be described. He did not shy from public debates at conferences or government hearings, using convincing data to support his more controversial theories. He possessed the rare creative talent to weave together distinct fields of knowledge into a tapestry that illuminated thought-provoking theories on ungulate biology and behavioral evolution, which then stimulated many of us to go out and dig up more data to eventually prove or disprove these theories. His theories were further supported by the vast wealth of knowledge gleaned from historical writings of early North American pioneers, depicting the game’s abundance or lack thereof. Jim Heffelfinger, the co-organiser for the 9th IDBC (2018), held in Estes Park, Colorado, best described this titan’s footprint. He affirmed ‘Geist was a visionary who brilliantly sorted through ecological relationships to form theories about how things came to be and how they worked. Not all of his theories were supported by data, but they all made us think deeply. When a theory was later disproved, Val was gracious and accepting, and genuinely excited that we had more information about that topic to know his theory wasn’t valid.’ Although sometimes denigrated, making speculations and building theories are actually among the pillars of producing science.

Last, we must mention his strong commitment to wildlife conservation. Several of his publications attest to that (Geist 1974, 1994, 1995, 2006; Geist et al. 2001). He was active for decades with IUCN, collaborating on the periodic updating of the Red List of endangered species, and working for the Caprinae Specialist Group and the Deer Specialist Group. He convened and chaired a landmark IUCN international symposium in 1971 on ungulate behaviour and management (Geist and Walther 1974), which brought many eminent scientists in this field together for the first time. This symposium was organised with an eye towards not only academia, but also towards those involved in conservation and management. Furthermore, over the years, Val influenced an entire army of younger conservation scientists and wildlife managers. Even well into his retirement years, Val's passion for wildlife conservation never subsided, shown by his active participation in the IUCN’s Huemul Task Force (HTF), a worldwide group of scientists organised to evaluate the conservation dilemma of the endangered Patagonian huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus), a deer indigenous to South America’s southern cone. Val, as one of the more active participants of this scientific committee, had his insatiable curiosity piqued by the many unknowns surrounding the ecology and evolution of this unfortunate species. The ‘mysterious’ huemul whet his keen appetite for discovery and knowledge. Val encouraged the members to ponder and dive deeper in the quest for plausible theories, even new paradigms. He was a master at that. The group’s members evolved over time, but Val stayed on to co-author several publications that evaluated the ultimate or root cause behind this species’ demise and included recommendations for more efficacious conservation strategies (Jimenez et al. 2008; Huemul Task Force 2012). Strikingly, what is likely the last publication of Val’s long career (Flueck et al. 2022), published after he passed away, turns out to be one of the more important papers to come out on this little-known endangered deer in terms of a leap in understanding its behavioural patterns from a historical and biological perspective, which can now guide novel applicable conservation management programs. According to the Conservation Journal Annual Publication Report 2022 (MDPI), that paper held the distinction of the seventh-most down-loaded paper in 2022. As for the huemul’s demise, Val continued to enthusiastically contribute his thoughts regarding this conundrum as his final days drew near, unbeknownst to any of the co-authors of his failing health.

Glancing through various obituaries, dozens of positive adjectives were used to describe his astounding qualities. This was one of our favourites: ‘He was graced with huge personality; passionate, intense, massive intellect, big of heart. He commanded a very firm handshake and incredible hugs. His smile would light up a room and welcome anyone in it.’ Yes, Val was definitely passionate about the life path he had chosen. And for that passion, we are graced with all the magnificent works he has added to our field of deer biology.

Although we may not fit into Val’s shoes, he would be delighted to see that every one of us would follow in his footsteps in terms of pursuing our passions and uncovering every stone in our path to get one step closer to more accurately describing our natural world, and to be willing to take the risk to be wrong along the way. Legendary characters such as Val may cross our paths once in a lifetime, if we are even that lucky. He leaves behind a world that is immeasurably richer for him having been a part of it. In this light, we would like to dedicate our 10th International Deer Biology Congress to our ‘deer’ friend and colleague Professor Doctor Valerius Geist.