Now, Anne Orlando is preparing to revisit
Siberia by brushing up on her Russian
By:Sally Goldenberg
Anne Orlando is looking forward to revisiting Siberia this summer, where she hopes to continue her research on endangered animals through studying snow leopards.
But after researching wildlife in Central America and Africa, the California resident hopes she hasn’t lost much command of the Russian language she learned during her years in Manville High School.
"I had taken Russian language during high school with Mr. Lisciandro and I never thought I would use Russian," said Ms. Orlando, who graduated a year early from Manville High School in 1991.
The former borough resident who returns to Manville once a year to visit her father and sister is working toward a doctorate degree in ecology from the University of California-Davis and has studied endangered species overseas for eight years.
"Ever since I was really small, I knew what I wanted to do. I think when I was maybe 3, Jane Goodall was my idol," said Ms. Orlando, who presently splits her time between writing her dissertation on West African elephants and collaring mountain lions for the California Department of Fish and Game.
Despite her young leanings toward wildlife biology, Ms. Orlando said, Manville did not provide her with an adequate environment for her anticipated studies, leading her to attend the University of Montana for a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology.
"Growing up in Manville, I didn’t know the name for what I wanted to do necessarily," she said. "As I was growing up I was realizing there was this great conservation need."
She recalled utilizing whatever open space and animal resources she could find in central New Jersey during her youth, such as Cloverland Farms in Frenchtown and horse stables in Kingston.
"I was always really drawn to animals," she said. "I practically moved into the horse farm."
Broadening her horizons from ponies to endangered species, she ventured to Africa several times between 1997 and 2001, braving temperatures of 120 degrees to study elephants in Mali and the Sahara Desert.
"I was looking at where elephants ranged and they had almost never been studied in West Africa," she said.
As she studied a species that is rapidly becoming extinct, Ms. Orlando said she worked with a team to collar and briefly drug the elephants in order to track their movements.
"My goal is to write a conservation plan for the population of elephants. They exist in one of the harshest climates in the world with not a lot of water and very little food," she said.
As she works on her dissertation, Ms. Orlando said she is applying similar skills she garnered in her African studies through her job in California.
She and colleagues collar and temporarily drug mountain lions in order to track their migration patterns, she said.
"Fish and Game tries to work with developers to try to preserve large valuable areas of wildlife habitat," she said. "We’re just using mountain lions sort of as an indicator because they’re large animals."
Though the department cannot stop a developer from tearing up open space, she said, migration studies can influence the location and extent of development.
"It’s trying to make compromises so that we can preserve the most important areas of wildlife habitat," she said.
And while she hopes to continue her work for a federal agency in the future, she is currently focused on her trip to Siberia.
"I’ve been in college for so many years now that I really just want to apply all this stuff that I’ve learned," she said. "I like the way Russian scientists do things. They’re really tough, but they’ve got a lot of spirit."
She only hopes to regain as much Russian as she lost during her time in Africa, a trip that commanded an understanding of French.
"Now I’m trying to forget French and get back into Russian," she said.

