In
the wake of a study that documented for the first time the use of weaponry by
Cross River gorillas to ward off threats by humans, the Wildlife Conservation
Society announced today new field surveys to better protect this most
endangered great ape.
The surveys are being funded in part by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service.
From Associated Press:
Four rare gorillas at the center of a five-year international tussle
were due to fly from South Africa just after midnight Friday to a
wildlife sanctuary in Cameroon.
Tinu, Izan, Oyin and Abbey were all lightly tranquilized as they were loaded into giant wooden crates Thursday for the 18-hour journey to their new home. They seemed fine as they emerged from that initial sedation, and were to lightly tranquilized again before the flight, said Christina Pretorius of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Clifford Nxomani, executive director of the Pretoria zoo, said he did not expect any hitches in the operation.
The Western Lowland gorillas, dubbed the Taiping Four — were smuggled as young animals to Taiping Zoo in Malaysia, via South Africa, using forged documents in 2002. The Malaysian government sent them back to South Africa in 2004 and they have since been kept at Pretoria's zoo.
South African officials relented earlier this year after at first claiming that under international law they should remain where they were as there was uncertainty over their true origin.
"These animals have become the poster children of the ugly side of the trade in endangered wildlife," said Pretorius, her voice choked with emotion. "They have really caught the international imagination."
"Africa's wildlife is disappearing from the earth right in front of our eyes," she said. "The return of the Taiping Four sends a clear message that Africa's wildlife is worth fighting for and that international law must be upheld."
Although the circumstances of the gorillas' capture as infants remain uncertain, they were probably victims of the bush meat trade. Typically adult gorillas are killed for meat and their young taken to sell. At least four out of five infants die before they get proper help.
Gorillas are protected from capture, killing or export under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Experts believe that fewer than 100,000 Western Lowland gorillas remain in the wild in West Africa. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently upgraded their status from endangered to critically endangered, largely as a result of being hunted, killed and captured for commercial use.
The gorillas — three females and one male — will be kept at the Limbe Wildlife Center sanctuary, which has a good record in rehabilitating orphans. Limbe staff spent the past few weeks at the Pretoria zoo to get used to the animals and two Pretoria zoo staff will accompany the gorillas to Cameroon to make sure they settle in, said Pretorius.
The six-year-old gorillas — which were all tested and declared free of disease — will be kept in quarantine for several months while they acclimatize.
"They are sociable animals and you can't just release four adolescent animals into a family group. They have to adapt," said Pretorius, whose organization helped meet the costs of the repatriation.
Kenya Airways agreed to fly the animals for free on a scheduled flight from Johannesburg, via Nairobi and onto Douala in Cameroon, and the zoo said it would cover all the medical costs.
The vibrant yellows and oranges of autumn have nothing on the newest residents at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Prospect Park Zoo. Just in time for Thanksgiving, the Zoo proudly welcomes two golden lion tamarin brothers. They may be new to their home, but these tiny monkeys with big hair and even bigger personalities are already turning heads, and tails!
Golden lion tamarins are native to Brazil. They weigh in at less than 25 ounces, and from the look of them, one might think most of that weight is hair. The aptly named monkeys have-- considering their small size--an enormous golden orange mane similar to that of a lion. But unlike their feline namesake, the tamarins are omnivores and feed primarily on fruits and insects.
The Zoo's new additions are both around three years old and hail from the Atlanta Zoo. These golden lion tamarins are the first of their kind at the Prospect Park Zoo, and the Zoo plans to start a breeding program by one day introducing a female. But for now, the inquisitive brothers can be found exploring their new home in the Zoo's Animal Lifestyles exhibit.
Even more notable than the adorable appearance and playful personalities of golden lion tamarins is their plight in the wild. The tamarins are native to the heavily populated coastal areas of Brazil, where much of the forest has been destroyed. As a result of this drastic habitat loss, there were once more golden lion tamarins in captivity than in the wild. Fortunately, captive breeding programs have been able to successfully reintroduce some 150 individuals into the wild.
The Prospect Park Zoo is pleased to play a part in the preservation of this species. With some luck and some time, the Zoo hopes to introduce new babies to Brooklyn and to Brazil, to help bolster their wild golden lion tamarin population.
Photo: WCS
From Associated Press:
Congo is setting aside more than 11,000 square miles of rain forest to
help protect the endangered bonobo, a great ape that is the most
closely related to humans and is found only in this Central African
country.
U.S. agencies, conservation groups and the Congolese government have come together to set aside 11,803 square miles of tropical rain forest , the U.S.-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative said in a statement issued this week.
The area amounts to just over 1 percent of vast Congo — but that means a park larger than the state of Massachusetts.
Bonobos — often lauded as the "peaceful ape" — are known for their matriarchal society in which female leaders work to avoid conflict, and their sex-loving lifestyle.
The bonobo population is believed to have declined sharply in the last 30 years, though surveys have been hard to carry out in war-ravaged central Congo. Estimates range from 60,000 to fewer than 5,000 living, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Art created by Great Ape Trust of Iowa’s resident orangutans and
bonobos for an exhibit at a Des Moines coffeehouse has sold out,
raising nearly $10,000 for great ape conservation efforts in the range
countries where the endangered species remain in the wild.
The Apes Helping Apes exhibit remains on display at Zanzibar’s Coffee Adventure through Nov. 25. Response has been so overwhelming that the orangutans are creating more paintings and some new ones may be hung before the exhibit closes.
The project is part of an ongoing commitment by Great Ape Trust to assist grassroots organizations supporting conservation initiatives for the four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa, and orangutans in Asia. All are on the brink of extinction.
Zanzibar’s owner Julie McGuire has been displaying the work of local artists since the coffeehouse opened in 1993. The work by orangutans Azy, Knobi and Allie and bonobos Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nathan has been a sensation with her regular customers and some new ones drawn to Zanzibar’s by the unique art exhibit. “We’ve had a couple of exhibits that have virtually sold out,” McGuire said, “but nothing at this speed. It’s very rare for a show to sell out completely.”
The apes creating the paintings for “Apes Helping Apes” did so voluntarily and as part of ongoing enrichment activities at Great Ape Trust, where scientific research seeks to understand the origins and future of culture, language, tool use and intelligence. The work at The Trust builds on a growing body of research that has found the four types of great ape – bonobos, orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas – are thinking, self-aware and intelligent beings.
From: AFP
Orangutans, using water and their wits, have emulated a crow in Aesop's
fable which illustrated the saying "Necessity is the mother of
invention," German researchers reported on Wednesday.
A team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig threw down a challenge to five female orangutans, aged seven, 11, 16, 17 and 32, housed in the local zoo.
The apes were presented with a tasty peanut that floated in a plastic tube.
The container was a quarter-filled with water, which meant that the nut was frustratingly out of reach to the animals.
The orangutans realised, though, that by taking mouthfuls of water from a cup placed nearby and spitting the water into the tube, they could make the nut float to the top and recover it easily.
At the start, it took the apes nine minutes on average to figure out the trick. But by the end of the 10-trial experiment they had whittled this down to a zippy 30 seconds.
The Leipzig team believe this illustrates orangutan inventiveness, showing the primates can use a "liquid tool" to get a reward. Breaking the tube was impossible and there was no stick available as an alternative retrieval method.
The study appears in Biology Letters, published by Britain's Royal Society, the de-facto British academy of sciences.
In Aesop's fable, a thirsty crow finds a pitcher of water but the water level is so low as to be out of reach. The bird places stones in the pitcher to raise the water level and thus quench its thirst.
"Orangutans can insightfully solve an analagous version of the problem faced by the crow," say the researchers, led by Natacha Mendes of the institute's Department for Developmental and Comparative Psychology.
They add, tongue in cheek: "It is yet to be seen if scientific evidence will show that crows can also behave as in the fable."
The largest known population of rare, gray-shanked
doucs has been discovered in a remote part of Vietnam. They are considered one of the world's 25 most-endangered primates. Biologists liken it to discovery a new country with more than 1 billion people.
Three surveys since 2005 by the WWF and Conservation International in Que Phuoc commune in Quang Nam province recorded at least 116 animals, with an estimated population of over 180 individuals. There may be more, since only a small part of the area has been surveyed.
“This is an exciting and important discovery because of the large size of the population,” Barney Long, a conservation biologist with the World Wide Fund for Nature's Vietnam program, said in a statement.
“It's very rare to discover a population of this size with such high numbers in a small area, especially for a species on the brink of extinction,” he said. “This indicates that the population has not been impacted by hunting like all other known populations of the species.”
The gray-shanked douc, or Pygathrix cinerea, was first described in 1997. They are colobine monkeys with cream-and peach-colored faces and white around their mouths. Their backs, bellies and arms are gray, and their hands are black; they have tufts of gray on their heads and white whiskers and tails. They spend much of their time in tree tops, subsisting on fruit and leaves.
Like many primate species in Vietnam, their population has been
devastated by hunting and to a lesser degree by habitat loss. A 2006
assessment by the World Conservation Union determined 65 percent of
Vietnam's primate species and subspecies were endangered or critically
endangered, making the country one of the highest global priorities for
primate conservation.
Photo: Frankfurt Zoological Society, Tilo Nadler, HO
A coalition of conservation groups is joining in a plan of action to save the world's rarest great ape - the Cross River gorilla - which is threatened by habitat destruction and poachers.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, and others have published recommendations for governmental agencies to protect the species - which is scattered in 11 locations along the mountainous border region between Cameroon and Nigeria.
“Although the situation looks dire for the Cross River gorilla, it is far from hopeless,” said Dr. James Deutsch, director of WCS’ Africa Program. “At first glance, the population seems to be fragmented, but we have evidence of occasional migrations between some of the locations, a finding that improves the prospects for saving these gorillas.”
Classified as Critically Endangered by IUCN’s Red List, the Cross River gorilla is the rarest of the four subspecies of gorilla, numbering under 300 individuals across its entire range. Gorilla gorilla diehli is one of two subspecies of western gorilla, the other being Gorilla gorilla gorilla, the western lowland gorilla. The eastern gorilla includes the eastern lowland gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), and the famous mountain gorillas of the Virunga Mountains and southern Uganda (Gorilla beringei beringei).
The biggest threats to Cross River gorillas are from habitat destruction and hunting. Gorillas are occasionally targeted by hunters of bushmeat in the region, and genetic analysis of the population reveals a reduction in numbers over the last 200 years that is most likely due to hunting. The fragmentation of their forest habitat is caused by farming, road-building, and the burning of forests by pastoralists.
To counter these threats, authors of the report have compiled a series of recommendations that include: Cooperative, landscape-based planning between conservation managers across the Cameroon-Nigeria border; raising awareness of the uniqueness of the Cross River gorilla and conservation in general, involving government agencies, NGOs, and local people in community-based conservation activities, the formulation of an ecotourism program that both benefits conservation and minimizes potential impacts on the gorillas, improving both existing legislation and law enforcement in the Cross River gorilla’s range and upgrading the infrastructure and management of existing protected areas and establishing new protected areas, with a number of site-specific recommendations.
A pair of Schmidt’s spot-nose monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius schmidti)
that were rescued from bushmeat markets in Africa and later imported
into the U.S. have given birth to their first offspring. The young
parents were originally discovered for sale in bushmeat markets of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2006, a coalition of zoos provided
resources to secure several orphaned animals, arrange their care, and
organize their ultimate importation into the U.S. before they were to be sold as pets in South Africa.
Wildlife World Zoo, in cooperation with five other zoos, each
nationally accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA),
participated in the successful rescue of over 30 African primates
representing five different species that are found in the DRC. Two of
those species, several immature black mangabeys (Lophocebus albigena aterrimus) and a pair of Schmidt’s spot-nose monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius schmidti)
are currently on display at Wildlife World Zoo. The juvenile mangabeys
have benefited from the socialization provided by the zoo’s other adult
mangabeys. Keepers note the spot-nose monkeys have been attentive
parents despite their youth, inexperience, and the fact this is their
first infant.
Zoo Director, Mickey Ollson hopes the rescue of these young animals and
the successful birth of future generations will help raise public
awareness about the devastating effects the bushmeat and illegal pet
trades are having on wild populations throughout Africa. “All of these
animals will invigorate the genetic diversity and health of several
species of primate under the care of AZA zoos—animal ambassadors that
may someday help preserve dwindling wild populations from going
extinct.”
Gorillas aren't just a bunch of big galoots. They have some very delicate table manners, according to researchers for the Zoological Society of London.
Observers noticed gorillas in West Africa fashion "napkins" out of leaves to clean their fingers and faces after eating messy food. Researches say this adds to previous evidence that great apes behave in a similar manner to humans in many arenas.
Gorillas are actually far more gentle than their chimpanzee cousins and follow a vegetarian diet of leaves and fruit. Unlike chimpanzees, which routinely use tools such as twigs and stones to hunt and gather food - gorillas are less technologically minded.
They have, however, been seen using sticks to find their way across swamps and pools.
And they take some pride in their appearance. Grooming - where fleas, bugs and mud are picked from each other's hair - is an essential part of their family life.
