A plea for kinder treatment of our primate relatives

...For one species to fight for the survival of another, even in times of stress, is something new in evolution. In this, more than all our technology, lies our claim to being human.

The above quote is from George Schaller writing in National Geographic in 1995 on the Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda (quoted in Camilla de la Bédoyère No One Loved Gorillas More: Dian Fossey Letters from the Mist p183)

In the 60s and 70s a lot of people, of various persuasions, would engage in 'consciousness raising' (and I confess that at the time I was never very sure exactly what was meant by that phrase). Well 30 years and more later this page is my own attempt at consciousness raising; about the plight of the great apes, family members who are in danger of becoming extinct in their natural homes, and who have a right to be treated with dignity and respect. I believe that we have a duty to help our cousins, as well as the members of our own species. I hope that through the efforts of some of the people mentioned below a much greater awareness of the inherent value of our primate cousins will come about and lead to a more secure future for them in the wild.

The trail that has lead me to assert that we must do more to protect great apes (and all other wildlife threatened with extinction)

When I was growing up in the 60s my parents somehow started getting copies of the American magazine National Geographic. In it, alongside the ads for Thunderbirds and Cadillacs, were pictures of a young blonde haired woman in the African jungle looking after chimpanzees. That young woman was, of course, Jane Goodall.

It wasn't until 1993 when I read Jared Diamond's book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee that I found out how close chimpanzees are, at least biologically, to us humans. Then in 1996 I read Jane Goodall's book In the Shadow of Man. A couple of years after that I became aware of the existence of the Great Ape Project and the idea of a community of equals which would give rights to great apes, which I felt was a very exciting idea! In June of 2003 I heard Dr Goodall speak (and in chimpanzee too:-) in Edinburgh, and subsequently found her web site. Then in August of 2003 after watching a programme on BBC4 on the Australian philosopher Peter Singer I found the web site for GAP, and added my name electronically to their petition. In October of 2003 I became a member of the Jane Goodall Institute in order to be kept informed of Dr Goodall's work.

Although I've been vegetarian for nearly 30 years I've never thought too much about the welfare of animals, or even the perilous situation of much of the world's wildlife. The BBC4 profile programme on Peter Singer, and the Great Ape Project (Singer was one of the people who instigated GAP), made me think a bit more about the plight of all animals. Great apes in particular, who are our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, and also other primates, are being treated vilely; hunted for bushmeat; for use in animal experiments; and to be kept as pets; their habitat diminishing; and, in the case of African apes, at threat from the ebola virus. Well, we all know that's just how the world is, but wouldn't it be nice to do something about it and make the world a better place, at least as far as our primate cousins are concerned.

To get an idea of the urgency of the crisis facing great apes I would suggest reading Eating Apes (get your local library to buy it:-) by Dale Peterson and Karl Ammann, an important book about the commercial bushmeat trade, and its consequences, in Central Africa. From this book I have learned that apes are capable of laughter as an expression of mirth, that they also sing (or hum), and that if not killed outright by a hunter will plead for their lives.

They beg with precisley the sort of expressive postures and gestures (a hunched bow, outstretched arms, pleading facial expression) that hunters see among human beggars in the city. p 54

This book also highlighted for me the damage done by mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo for coltan ore in order to obtain the element tantalum. (See this BBC News piece Mobile phones 'fuel gorillas' plight'.) Tantalum has imoprtant qualities for use as a capacitor in electronic devices (such as this laptop computer on which I am writing but also mobiles, pdas). I made an attempt to discover if my iBook and iPod, which I think will have been manufactured after 2001 (the iPod certainly), have tantalum capacitors but didn't get very far. No matter how much I may enjoy my iPod if it's got a tantalum capacitor it's not worth the destruction of the rainforest that occurred in DRC during the late 1990s. I would hope that Apple will have acted responsibly over this issue of the material used to make capacitors in their portable devices.

Finally, why should we care about the extinction of the other great apes? Here is Sue Savage-Rumbaugh from her book Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

If this happens, it means we will lose the opporunity to learn about ourselves from our nearest living relatives, just at the time that we have indeed recognized them as our relatives. It also means that we will have frittered away our one remaining chance to allow our sibling species to the live the way of life for which they, and we, co-evolved across the millenia. p 280