Great Apes

“Our fellow primates are in trouble. In a study of unprecedented scope, a team of 31 primatologists has analyzed every known species of primate to judge how they are faring. The news for man’s closest animal relatives is not good. Three-quarters of primate species are in decline, the researchers found, and about 60 percent are now threatened with extinction. From gorillas to gibbons, primates are in significantly worse shape now than in recent decades because of the devastation from agriculture, hunting and mining. I think we’re going to get quite a number of extinctions within next 50 years if things go on the way they are,’ said Anthony B. Rylands, a senior research scientist at Conservation International and a co-author of the new study, which was published in Science Advances.”

“Chimpanzees are in crisis, but NASA may be able to help: The agency recently announced a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute, in hopes of helping chimpanzee conservation efforts... The new partnership will use NASA satellites and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat satellite to monitor the chimps’ forest homes. One of the primary reasons chimpanzees are at risk is habitat loss, according to Lilian Pintea, a remote sensing specialist and vice president of conservation science for the Jane Goodall Institute. In fact, the deforestation is so drastic that it can be seen from space, Pintea said. In 2000, he saw a side-by-side comparison of satellite images of the area around Gombe National Park, a chimpanzee reserve in Tanzania. The images, one taken in 1972 and the other in 1999, show the dramatic deforestation that occurred outside the park... ‘NASA satellite data helps us understand what it means to be a chimp, by overlaying distribution of the habitat with the chimpanzee behavior and ranging data,’ Pintea said in a statement. This data enables him and other scientists to monitor where chimps are at risk with more context... Chimpanzees’ habitat once spanned an uninterrupted belt of forest and woodlands, but chimps in the region now occupy increasingly small fragments of land outside the park area. Population growth, logging and charcoal production led to the increased deforestation, according to conservationist Jane Goodall.”

“On January 3, 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) together with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, the Arcus Foundation, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced the commencement of a year-long strategic planning process involving major organizations working to conserve bonobos (Pan paniscus) in the Democratic Republic of Congo . . . Although there is still much to learn about this species, bonobos face several threats to their existence in the wild. One significant threat is poaching for bushmeat by local people to raise needed cash. Although local people have traditionally held a strong taboo against eating bonobo meat based on ancient beliefs that bonobos and humans lived long ago as brothers in the forest, this taboo has broken down in recent years as some people resort to hunting bonobos in the forest for meat due to pressures from the civil war in the region, increasing growth in human population, and desperate economic circumstances. Bonobo infants are often taken from their mothers after an adult has been shot for bushmeat and are sold in the illegal pet trade or end up in orphanages. Even if traps or wire snares are not intended for apes, these devices ensnare bonobos and cause dismemberment, or other injuries, resulting in infection and death. Moreover, the exploitation of forest resources for firewood and charcoal production and the clearcutting of forests for agriculture have contributed to the increasing decline in bonobo habitat.”

“Monday’s news, that two gorillas called Massabi and Koto, had bred in the wild, was greeted with joy. The two gorillas had been reintroduced into protected reserves in the Congo and Gabon along with 43 others by the John Aspinall Foundation, and they were only the second and the third re-habituated gorillas to have produced offspring. It was a small victory in a long war, but one worth celebrating. Damien Aspinall, the head of the John Aspinall Foundation, has long been aware of the extraordinary charms of the gorilla.... ‘It’s a crime against nature that gorillas should be hunted to extinction. We’re doing all we can to prevent that happening, but we are a tiny drop in a vast ocean.’”

“The Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve is the pilot and model for the Bonobo Peace Forest, a connected network of community-based reserves and conservation concessions, supported by sustainable development. Officially established by the DRC Ministry of the Environment in May 2009, the 4,875-square-kilometer (1,882-square-mile) reserve spans an area of rainforest 1.5 times the size of the state of Rhode Island. It serves as a testament to the power of community-led conservation. The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI) and local partner NGO Vie Sauvage first signed accords with area residents in 2003 to protect the rainforest and the bonobos who live within. The indigenous Mongandu people at Kokolopori respect ancestral traditions regarding the protection of bonobos, and their daily efforts on behalf of bonobo conservation are yielding excellent results.”

“The infant chimpanzee was tied to a pole in a windowless, padlocked mud hut. Its owner told employees of the Jane Goodall institute, who were posing as buyers, that he had found the creature and was trying to sell it for several hundred dollars. The orphaned chimp was rescued by the institute’s Burundian workers, who now care for it, along with 18 other chimps rescued from captivity. They have named the baby Bahati, which means lucky in the Kirundi language, because it survived. But there is little chance that Bahati will ever be able to return to the Central African forests where it was born, conservationists say. The workers believe that the chimp’s mother and as many as 20 other adult chimpanzees in her social group were killed to capture the infant. Poaching is only one of the forces conspiring against Burundi’s chimpanzee population. Their habit is also slowly disappearing.”

“Often I have gazed into a chimpanzee’s eyes and wondered what was going on behind them. I used to look into Flo’s, she so old, so wise. What did she remember of her young days? David Greybeard had the most beautiful eyes of them all, large and lustrous, set wide apart. They somehow expressed his whole personality, his serene self assurance, his inherent dignity — and, from time to time, his utter determination to get his way. For a long time I never liked to look a chimpanzee straight in the eye — I assumed that, as is the case with most primates, this would be interpreted as a threat or at least as a breach of good manners. Not so. As long as one looks with gentleness, without arrogance, a chimpanzee will understand, and may even return the look. And then — or such is my fantasy — it is as though the eyes are windows into the mind. Only the glass is opaque so that the mystery can never be fully revealed.”

“Early in my research, which National Geographic Society has supported throughout, I discovered that these powerful but shy and gentle animals accepted and responded to my attentions when I acted like a gorilla. So I learned to scratch and groom and beat my chest. I imitated my subjects’ vocalizations (hoots, grunts, and belches), munched the foliage they ate, kept low to the ground and deliberate in movement — in short, showed that my curiosity about them matched theirs towards me . . . I have been able to crawl undetected into the midst of a contentedly feeding group and begin a belch vocalization series of my own and have it answered by the animals around me.”

“Deep in the forests of Zaire there lives a little-known species of 3-foot-tall ape that some scientists believe may displace the chimpanzee as the animal believed to be man’s closest living relative. Some scientists have suggested that these rare and endangered creatures, which Africans call ‘bonobo’ and Westerners have generally called ‘pygmy chimpanzee,’ may be the most mentally advanced nonhuman animal and may represent a surviving lineage more closely related to the early ancestors of man than any other living primate . . . Dr. Bourne, who has several decades of experience with wild and captive-bred ordinary chimpanzees, said . . . 'They didn’t behave like fresh-caught animals at all,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t the kind of fear and excitement you see in ordinary chimps. They were really quite friendly. I could touch the hand of the adult and groom the hair on its hand. It didn’t pull back or seem frightened.’”

“In the lake region south of the [Nguni] River they are fairly abundant as far south as the head-waters of the Rembo Nkami and through the low country... but they are very rare in the forests, and unknown in the highlands and plains of this country. South of the Chi Loango they are quite unknown. And south of the Congo never heard of. There are no means possible to estimate their number, but they are not so numerous as may be supposed, and from the reckless slaughter of them by the natives in order to secure them for white men, they may soon become extinct. Their ferocity alone has saved them up to this time from such a fate , but the use of approved arms will soon overcome that.”

“This creature was brought over by Capt. Henry Flower in the ship Speaker from Angola on the coast of Guinea in August 1783. It is of the female kind, as is two foot four inches high, walks erect, drinks Tea, eats her food & sleeps in a humane way: was 21 months old when this Picture was drawn. She hath a Capacity of understanding and great Affability.”

“In its inmost recess was an island similar to that formerly described, which contained in like manner a lake with another island, inhabited by a rude description of people. The females were much more numerous than the males, and had rough skins: our interpreters called them Gorillae. We pursued but could take none of the males; they all escaped to the top of precipices, which they mounted with ease, and threw down stones; we took three of the females, but they made such violent struggles, biting and tearing their captors, that we killed them, and stripped off the skins, which we carried to Carthage: being out of provisions we could go no further.“