Joan Root, Wildlife Conservationist, Dies at 69

[alicia-w]

By MARC LACEY
Published: January 17, 2006
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 16 - Joan Root, an animal lover and conservationist who collaborated with her husband, Alan, on a series of wildlife documentaries in the 1970's, was killed Friday in Naivasha, Kenya. She was 69.

Ms. Root was shot to death by assailants who invaded her lakefront farmhouse, the police said. Two men were arrested but the motive remains unknown, officials said.

Ms. Root was an active conservationist, combating illegal fishing on the lake in recent years. Her 88-acre property was a refuge for orphaned animals, including an aardvark, a hippo and an African porcupine that would shake its quills on her command. She once slept with a caracal, a wildcat, to get it used to humans and make it easier to capture on film.

Joan Thorpe, the daughter of a British coffee farmer, was born in Nairobi. She married Mr. Root, an amateur filmmaker, in 1961. Before they divorced in 1981, they collaborated on a variety of attention-getting nature films. "Mysterious Castles of Clay," narrated by Orson Welles, showed the inner workings of a termite mound. It was nominated for an Oscar in 1978. Other films included "Balloon Safari" in 1976 and "Lights, Action, Africa" in 1980.

The couple used a hot-air balloon for some of their filming, capturing the vast savannahs of the Masai Mara Game Reserve and ascending over Mount Kilimanjaro.

In "Secrets of the African Baobab," they put a camera inside a hornbill's nest and waited two years for the birds to return.

For the film about termites, they trained their lens on a termite mound and waited 30 days for the alates, the winged stage of the termite life cycle, to emerge.