Tilo Nadler


Tilo Nadler is a primatologist and the founder of Endangered Primate Rescue Center, which is the first wildlife rehabilitation center in Indochina.

Life

Nadler was born in Dresden, Germany. He is the son of Arthur Heinrich Nadler and Irma Nadler and survived the Bombing of Dresden in World War II as a four-year-old along with his parents and younger sister Bia. The Partition of Germany led to regimented educational choices for citizens of Demokratische Republik or East Germany and Nadler studied aircon engineering despite his aptitude for biology.
Nadler became an avid birder and pursued ornithological research in the Eastern Bloc countries and served as head biologist in the 32nd Soviet Antarctic Expedition. He was funded for three years by the Frankfurt Zoological Society to train park rangers of Vietnam's Cuc Phuong National Park, starting January 1993 to protect the habitat of the rediscovered endemic and critically endangered Delacour's langur. Just months into the project, two subadult male Delacour's langurs were confiscated by rangers and Nadler was tasked with hand-raising them. EPRC was born out of the necessity to handle many newly rescued endangered primates including the Cat Ba Langur, Tonkin snub-nosed monkey and Gray-shanked douc langur.

Discovery

Nadler and his team are credited with the discovery of GSD as a new primate species in 2001 as also the rediscovery of the Black langur , the black morph of Hatinh langur that could well be a separate species and is in the realm of ongoing research. His research paved the way in splitting the silvered langur into two genetically distinct species, the Indochinese silvered and Annamese silvered . Nadler and co-workers discovered a new crested gibbon species, the northern yellow-cheeked gibbon in 2010.
Nadler has earned repute as a leaf monkey or langur specialist, designer-cum-fabricator of housing and semi-wilderness areas for langurs, gibbons and lorises, reintroduction ecologist for Vietnamese primates, founder-editor of Vietnamese Journal of Primatology and conservationist working with communities for primate conservation. Van Long Nature Reserve is Vietnam's first and only reserve dedicated to conserving an endangered primate, the Delacour's langur, at Nadler's behest.
Nadler is married to Nguyen Thi Thu Hien and they have two sons Khiem Nguyen Nadler and Heinrich Nguyen Nadler.