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Visions of Primates -
The
Satya
Interview with Dale Peterson (see below: bushmeat)
Dale
Peterson is the author several books, including
The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey into Primate
Worlds (Houghton Mifflin, 1989), and co-author with Jane Goodall of
Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and
People (University of Georgia Press, 2000). He is also editor of a
two-volume autobiography of Goodall, An Autobiography in Letters (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), the
first volume of which was published in April. He recently spoke with
Catherine Clyne about how he
became interested in primates and the crucial issues that they face in the wild.
What inspired you to write
The Deluge and the Ark
and to continue exploring primates with Jane Goodall in
Visions of Caliban?
I received a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1977. I didn’t want to
be a teacher, so I became both a carpenter and soon gravitated toward writing
about computers. In the mid-1980s I decided that I wanted to write about animals
and conservation, because that’s what I cared about.
In 1984, I read about the endangered South American muriqui monkey. There were
just a few hundred left in the world, in South America, although they used to be
common. The last of the muriquis were in a patch of land in a forest in Brazil,
which was owned by one man. He was going to retire and his sons had already said
that they would cut down the forest when they inherited the land. At first I
just tried to raise money to help save the forest, though eventually I
volunteered my services as a writer. This offer wasn’t taken up. Instead I ended
up writing my first book about endangered primates—The
Deluge and the
Ark.
I started from zero not even knowing what a primate is. I did a glut of
research, but at that point all I had was an encyclopedia of facts. I realized
that I had to travel and actually see primates for myself. I started late in
life; it was all a big adventure for me. Basically, I bought a plane ticket to
Brazil and just dropped into a rainforest to look for primates, so it was
totally self-taught. So The Deluge and the
Ark became the story of my journey around the world, looking for the
12 most endangered primates and fitting them into a larger context of why so
many primates in general—this wonderful group of perhaps 300 species—were
endangered, and why some are so critically endangered that there are only a few
handfuls left.
I discovered that the human population has increased five or six-fold in the
last hundred years and so humans are basically taking over every possible
habitat and either using it directly or just destroying it. Strange people in
the States say that there isn’t a problem. These are people who are living in
wealth and haven’t really looked at the rainforest in Brazil. But in other parts
of the world you’ll see intense poverty and a conflict between human growth and
the declining natural world.
I carefully selected the 12 primate species that I wrote about to represent
geographical areas and specific problems. Chimps are endangered but I avoided
them in this book; there’s so much written about them and so much to know, so it
would take a full book just to cover them. But in the back of my mind, I thought
that somebody should write a good book about them because there are some real
problems that should be described. After writing
The Deluge and the Ark I met Jane
Goodall—a great hero of mine. We decided to do
Visions of Caliban together. Again, here I was with no
particular expertise on primates, working with a world expert. What could I
contribute? In this case, with my literary background, I could think of chimps
through Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
I think it made the issue more attractive to people who were not themselves
primatologists.
Why the keen interest in primates?
Primates are wonderfully poetic animals for me. It’s so spectacular to see them
in the wild—a world of difference from seeing them in zoos. I’ve been privileged
to see more primates in the wild than most people.
Apes are so close to humans—closer than we imagine. Seeing them in the wild you
start to realize this; it breaks down the barrier of "us" vs. "them." They have
the same emotions and perceptual world—so close to ours. In the wild, it’s not
apparent right away. Then you begin to notice. Mothers have the same expression
of adoration when they look at their baby, like a Madonna and child. Jane
Goodall referred to them early on as "ladies and gents out there." She
recognized that our usual distance from animals is a human construct.
What was one of the greatest moments
that you experienced while doing these projects?
One of my greatest moments was seeing West African chimpanzees in the wild use
stone tools. Suddenly they no longer look like animals. They keep these stones
in their little workshop right beneath the nut trees. The stones are rare in the
forest, especially ones of the right size, so they get used again and again and
after a while they get very rounded and shaped. If you took them out of the
forest and didn’t know that a chimp had used them, you’d think that it was some
sort of human artifact—there’s no way to tell the difference. The chimps squat
down, just as people would, and they hammer nuts with a stone until they crack
open and they eat them. They do it very skillfully—it’s not easy cracking nuts
open. It’s fascinating to see and to experience them in that way.
What was the greatest shock and/or
disappointment?
Looking at the utterly devastating ecological destruction in parts of the Third
World. You’ll go into an area that you know was recently tropical forest
then—boom!—it’s just a wasteland, somebody cut it down and it’s gone. It’s the
most shocking thing. Ten years earlier it was this gorgeous, rich and full
place, and all of a sudden it’s just a desert with the hot sun beating down and
that’s it. It’s devastating to see, particularly when you become aware of just
how extensive it is.
What I find disappointing is the general indifference we have in the First World
where we have the money to solve these problems. People that I know, that we all
know, are more focused on—let’s say the bestseller list—all of the kinds of
things that are utterly trivial navel gazing. It’s depressing to see that people
are so shallow. Americans are no different from others, except that we have the
wealth and the political clout to change things. But we just don’t seem to care
enough. Human indifference is something that I find discouraging.
People are bombarded by bad news. It’s a natural human instinct to just stop
listening to it. The big news is what doesn’t get put on the daily news. The big
news is the big environmental things, the changes that are affecting us on a
large scale and in very long-term ways, like the loss of species diversity. I’m
almost voting for us to stop reading the daily trivia so we can figure out what
the really important things are and worry about those.
What needs to change to cut down the
rate of the extinction of primates in the wild?
The biggest issue is that somehow human population growth has to stabilize. Then
we have to both reduce the total population and consolidate in some sense, which
means preserving wilderness areas in spite of human demands. In order to reach
this long-term picture, we need the political will and money. I get disturbed
when I see philanthropists giving away great sums of money—they’re giving to
good causes, of course, but it seems that every worthy cause in the world has to
do only with people. I think that is short-sighted because people and animals
are in the same boat and when the wilderness is gone, humans will be
impoverished.
What purpose should zoos have, if any?
The weakness of the animal rights view is that it tends not to distinguish
between nonhuman species—I think that’s a mistake because ultimately you are
comparing a worm to a gorilla. When you look at zoos from an ethical/animal
rights point of view, you have to have some sophistication about what animals
are. One level would be to say that the apes—chimps, bonobos, gorillas and
orangutans—are so close to humans that all four species have learned language in
laboratories, are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors, which means they
have some sort of self recognition, and all four species are capable of real
laughter and mirth. So those species have a special mentality that puts them, in
my opinion, in a pretty special place. Basically I don’t think they should be in
zoos. On the other hand, they are in zoos and zoos can provide the best possible
captive environment; certainly they can provide something better than
laboratories.
Whether zoos are doing the right thing, the answer is yes and no, and it depends
on the zoo. I think mostly what zoos have to offer is education, and it’s there
that zoos can make a big difference—they should be doing that both with their
exhibits and obviously with their information presentations. But education is
the "business" of zoos and by and large I don’t think that they are doing
enough.
What comments do you have regarding the
conservation role that zoos put forth as their mission?
Conservation? You might have seen a little bit of cringing about that in
Deluge and the
Ark.
When I went to San Diego Zoo I saw this big sign about how zoos are "saving the
world" and so on. They’re not. The captive breeding that goes on in zoos has
been good in some cases, but it is not a serious aspect of the conservation of
primates. Having said that, I certainly applaud captive breeding because it
reduces the pressure to take animals out of the wild. And there’s something to
be said for preserving the gene pool in captivity, but it’s so difficult and so
rare to return endangered species to their habitats; the ones you can do it with
best are birds and grazing animals and the occasional primate (the golden lion
tamarin is one example). I’m certainly glad that we have a good population of
bonobos in captivity because they’re so rare and extremely endangered and at
least in the darkest moments, you can feel "well, even if they go extinct in the
wild at least they exist somewhere." But really, after a generation or
two—particularly with the intelligent social primates—it would be hard to
imagine putting them back. It would be like taking a person into the woods and
saying "now go be a caveman." It doesn’t really work that way.
What current projects are you working
on?
I’ve just finished editing Jane Goodall’s family letters—many written by her
while sitting in the forest, waiting for the chimps. They are extraordinary, not
just because they are written by a historical figure but because they are
utterly charming and engaging. She just wrote and wrote! She sometimes wrote
letters every week, giving a wonderful series of precise snapshots of her life.
I have about two million words worth so I put the best 10 percent into a
two-volume autobiography called An
Autobiography in Letters. The first volume,
Africa in My Blood, was just
released in April. I’m also writing her biography.
I’m also writing a book about bushmeat—wild animal meat. It’s a problem because
people are now eating the apes who are highly endangered and could easily go
extinct by the next generation.
Wildlife
trafficking driving 'severe declines' in traded species, finds study
February
15, 2021 The Guardian Wildlife populations decline by an average of 62% in
areas where species are traded, pushing some closer to extinction, according to
a new report. Animals traded for pet industry, bushmeat, traditional
medicine, ivory and lab use declined locally by up to 99.9%
The first
analysis to quantify the impact of the legal and illegal wildlife trade looked
at 133 land-based species and found the most endangered – which typically have
smaller populations – are most at risk, with average declines of 81%. In some
cases this resulted in local disappearances, with certain populations of spider
monkeys and Baird’s tapir declining by 99.9%, according to an international team
of researchers led by Sheffield University.
Multiple
local disappearances could lead to global extinctions, the research found. “Our
paper shows wildlife trade causes species to decline, which is a massive
concern, because where species decline there is always a risk they could go
extinct,” said lead researcher Oscar Morton, a PhD student at Sheffield
University.
Some estimates suggest the
illegal wildlife trade could be worth as much as $23bn (£16.5bn) a year, with
more than 100 million plants and animals trafficked annually. The global impact
of this trade on species in the wild was previously unknown. “We reviewed
thousands of published articles, in a huge comprehensive search of the available
research. Then we analysed all this data from all these different species,” said
Morton.
The team
looked at the local and international wildlife trade, as well as legal and
illegal trade. “All trade leads to the same result – removing species from their
habitat. Some illegal trade is sustainable but some legal trade is horrifically
unsustainable. Here we wanted to assess the overall impacts,” said Morton.
The main
drivers of wildlife trafficking are the pet industry, bushmeat (defined as
wildlife traded for food consumption), traditional medicine, ivory and
laboratory use. The study did not include subsistence-based bushmeat eaten by
the communities that hunted it.
The researchers found only
31 studies that contained sufficiently rigorous data on population impacts,
according to the paper, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. These included
506 data samples containing population information on 99 species of mammal, 24
species of bird and 10 species of reptile.
Researchers compared areas
where wildlife trade was active to unexploited control sites. They found that
wildlife trade was driving population declines in 56%, even in protected areas.
This research follows a study published in Science in 2019 which found
18% of the world’s known land-based vertebrates are included in the wildlife
trade, 50% more than previous estimates.
A brown
spider monkey with her baby in Santa Fe zoo, Medellín, Colombia. Researchers
have discovered that some local populations of the monkeys have virtually
disappeared. Photograph: Luis Eduardo Noriega A/EPA “All of these diverse forms
of trade are suppressing wildlife abundance really dramatically,” said one of
the paper’s authors, David Edwards, professor of conservation science at
Sheffield University, who described the findings as “sobering”.
“The fact
that we are seeing such severe declines over many different kinds of species and
across different scales at which trade’s occurring – I think that is a surprise.
And I think it’s something we all need to be really concerned about,” he said.
There was a
lack of sufficiently rigorous data to include amphibians, invertebrates, cacti
and orchids in the analysis, despite being significant parts of the global
wildlife trade. There were also “several alarming patterns” in the geographic
coverage of suitable studies, with only four from Asia, one from North America
and none in Europe, the researchers found. Most studies were focused on South
America and parts of Africa.
“Lots of
people who read this in the UK might not think this is anything to do with them.
But it’s about our wider relationship with wildlife, which we view as a
replenishable commodity. If it’s not proven to be sustainable, why do we assume
it is?” said Morton.
National and
international trade – which were found to be more significant drivers of decline
than local trade – generally involve the extraction and trade of species of high
commercial value, such as ivory from African elephants, horns from Javan
rhinoceros and pangolin scales from across Asia and Africa.
Local wildlife trade
involving the extraction or commercialisation of bushmeat supports an estimated
150 million households. Researchers say there is an urgent need for quantitative
studies that support the potential for well-managed trade. “Many hunters are
likely already following sustainable practices and there needs to be widespread
skill-sharing of these,” said Morton.
The
researchers said there should be better protective measures for threatened
species and more research on the impacts of specific species at a local level.
“Improved management, tackling both unsustainable demand and trade reporting
must be a conservation priority to prevent rampant trade-induced declines,” they
wrote in the paper.
Dr Harry
Marshall, a conservationist from Manchester Metropolitan University who was not
involved in the research, said the methodology was robust and it was important
to address the lack of research in the area. “This research is important as it
demonstrates quantitatively the impact trade is having on species on a global
scale, which is potentially very large and concerning for certain species.”
Marshall said
the impact of trade on population declines was predictable, but he was surprised
that the study included legal trade. “The impact of legal trade is often ignored
and only recently being taken seriously, so it is good to see this covered,” he
said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/15/wildlife-trade-drives-species-decline-study-aoe
(Source: with photos & links)
Find more
age of extinction coverage here,
and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on
Twitter for all the latest news and features
Read more:
SATYA Zoo Issues;
exotic animal trade; primates; behind bars; bushmeat trafficking; Surabaya's
rising death toll
Investigating the Illegal
Wildlife Market in Mong La, Burma; 2019 coronavirus
pandamic, inside these horrific animal markets
Zoos: prisons by any other name;
Toronto Zoo elephants moving, update 2015; Bowmanville Zoo owner seen on video
abusing Siberian tiger; cruelty charges, closing, update
2017; Calgary Zoo's long record of obituaries
“All animals, including
humans, have a right to lives of dignity and respect, without forced
intrusions.” Marc Bekoff
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