When Cathy "CJ" Hazell, AS '76, set out to research the wolf population in the former Soviet republic of Kyrghyzstan, she knew she would encounter difficulties. Steep, rocky terrain, bitter cold and lack of roads turned her seven expeditions into tests of physical endurance. Overly zealous guards at the Uzbekistan border suspected she was a spy. And, then there was
the language barrier. Hazell speaks some Russian, but most of the mountain guides spoke only Kyrghyz.

She was most surprised, though, by the reluctance, even among conservationists, to recognize the importance of preserving the wolf population. "I realized just how important
this research was when I was at a dinner speaking to the director of Tabiat [a leading nature group in Kyrghyzstan]. 'Wolves?' he said. 'I think we should just kill them all.' The general attitude there is that wolves are vermin and should be wiped out. When I began to explain their importance using ecological theory, he understood," Hazell says. Tabiat eventually helped fund and organize some of Hazell's research excursions.

Hazell spent the 1998-99 academic year in Osh, Kyrghyzstan, where her husband, Russ Kleinbach, was teaching at Osh State University on a Fulbright fellowship. Although Hazell was in the midst of classes at the State University of New York at Syracuse, working toward a doctorate in environmental science and forest biology, a year in Asia was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Hazell and her husband were among 40-50 Americans living in Osh, a city of 300,000 to 500,000 people. Most of the other Americans were missionaries or Peace Corps workers, and they did run into another UD alumna, Sarah Amsler, CHEP '94, who is teaching in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrghyzstan. Amsler and Kleinbach are now collaborating on sociological research.

"Osh is really more like a big village than a city," Hazell says. "It has retained a lot of the Central Asian culture and isn't nearly as Russified as Bishkek. It is very common to see people wearing traditional dress, and Kyrghyz and Uzbek are the most commonly heard languages on the street."

Fifteen years ago, Osh was an industrial city whose residents had jobs and money and could travel frequently. Ninety-eight percent of adults are literate. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Soviet funds dried up, and along with the funds went the scientists, the research equipment, the computers. "In 10 years, those people went from living comfortable middle-class lives to being unemployed," Hazell says.

Hazell's professional goal for the year abroad was to learn about the region's wildlife and get involved in research in progress. What she found was that precious little research is taking place because funds and resources are too limited. So, she spent most of her time researching on her own and talking with conservationists. She also taught courses on the ecosystem at Osh State University and Osh Technical University. In her search for wolves, Hazell traveled to remote areas of Kyrghyzstan's southern provinces, Osh Oblast and Jalal-abad Oblast. More than 90 percent of the country is mountainous, 40 percent of that rock. At best, Hazell and her guides made the several-day journeys on horseback. More often, they made their way on foot because the animals were unable to navigate the steep mountains, some of which soar to more than 16,000 feet.

"We were walking almost straight up the mountains, almost like climbing stairs in the snow," Hazell says. At times, the exertion and the thin air made it difficult to breathe.

An American researching wolves in a former Soviet republic is in itself unusual. Hazell's circuitous career path also sets her apart. The 44-year-old Hazell left UD with a degree in American studies and a plan to become a lawyer. "But, I changed my mind a semester before graduating," she says. "I got married and went to grad school in American history at Temple University for a year, but, then, I had two babies in two years, so I wasn't able to continue."

She later entered the male-dominated construction field, where she was quite successful. She ranked first in her union apprenticeship and ran a profitable company that specialized in commercial and residential renovation.

Just about the time her interest in the construction field began to lessen in the early '90s, the market began to dry up. With her children now teenagers, Hazell figured it was the perfect time to launch a new career-or, as she phrases it, her "second incarnation"-by following her lifelong interest in conservation. She headed back to the classroom, first at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science and then at the University of Delaware, where she studied entomology with a wildlife concentration. She left UD one semester shy of her B.S. in order to begin Ph.D. studies at SUNY.

Hazell also managed to squeeze in a summer as a Student Conservation Association intern with the Bureau of Land Management in Craig, Colo., where she surveyed prairie dog communities and potential release sites as part of a black-footed ferret reintroduction program.

Large predators have intrigued Hazell since her youth-wolves, tigers, jaguars, leopards. "Probably, it was reading all that Jack London stuff," she says.

Large predators are among the most endangered animals in many areas, not only because they continue to be hunted, but also because they compete with humans for land. "I'm very interested in discovering the relationship predators have to the rest of an ecosystem so we can develop practical strategies for preventing their extinctions," Hazell says.

While not endangered yet, the wolf population is decreasing in central Asia, even as the government offers bounties of 500 to 1,500 "som" per animal, quadruple the minimum-wage salary. Hazell says she hopes to get funding so she can return to Kyrghyzstan to do doctoral research on the wolf population. "This area of Asia, is a really important region ecologically, and the work just isn't being done there," she says.

-Theresa Gawlas Medoff, AS '94M