Bushmeat Home Page | News Flashes | Bushmeat Papers | Bushmeat Photos | Related Websites CONSERVATION BECOMES A GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN THE ERA OF BUSHMEAT AND PRIMATE KINSHIP
Dr. Anthony L. Rose, Ph.D.
Executive Director, The Biosynergy Institute, USA
ABSTRACT: Human predation has become a major threat to African primates. International and national exploiters allow lawbreaking and support commercial bushmeat hunting in their concessions. Many primate populations are being destroyed faster than their habitat. At the same time human kinship with apes and monkeys is becoming widely accepted in the North and their slaughter and consumption are being seen as murder and cannibalism. This instills conflict in Africans who have overlaid their traditional theistic relation to nature with colonial European attitudes that view wildlife as an exploitable commodity. It also challenges proponents of human dominion and reductionist science. Conservation is now a global social movement. Major paradigm shifts are underway which require dramatic changes in strategy and practice. Fundamental is the turn from saving biodiversity to restoring human-nature biosynergy. Experts from business, religion, and the applied social sciences will take the lead from biologists to construct the next Zeitgeist. We must do more than save wildlife and wilderness. We must build a Global Life Alliance that can safeguard the world ecology, develop eco-social harmony, and re-inspire the natural spirit of humanity itself.
CONSERVATION BECOMES A GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN THE ERA OF BUSHMEAT AND PRIMATE KINSHIP
It is said in theory and affirmed by research that the major revolutions in any science, and in most pursuits of knowledge, are set off primarily by players who come to an issue from outside the traditional domains of its study. In this position paper that premise is put to work. Primatologists from laboratory to field station have focused on non-humans, trading on their understanding of apes and monkeys to postulate theories of mind, tenets of social behavior, and principles of biodiversity. The opposite is done here. This treatise will assert findings and theories in human values, behavior, and social systems, all directed at the penultimate challenge to biological disciplines: conservation. Few will contest the fact that conservation is a decidedly human affair, and that its problems and practices have more to do with clothed people than hairy animals. Here we will explore the human factors that promulgate phenomena from ape eating to deep ecology, and describe social processes that are transforming conservation from a narrow biological endeavor to a massive social movement. Readers are warned that the style and tone of this work varies to suit the terrain -- scholarly science talk mixes with theoretical musings and metaphysical ideals. This reflects and requires the inclusive inter-disciplinary thinking which is fundamental to the social movement which wildlife conservation has become in the era of bushmeat and primate kinship.THE BUSHMEAT CRISIS DOMINATES AFRICAN PRIMATE CONSERVATION
Human predation has become a major threat to African primates. International and national exploiters allow lawbreaking and support commercial bushmeat hunting in their concessions. Many primate populations are being destroyed faster than their habitat.
Across the forest regions of west and central Africa a conflux of factors are making human predation a leading threat to the survival of many primates, including the great apes. Primate hunting is reported in 27 of the 44 primate study and conservation projects described in IUCN's recent status survey on African Primates (Oates, 1996b). In twelve of these territories, human predation is said to be a severe threat to species survival. The latest IUCN Red List of vulnerable species (Baillie & Groombridge, 1996) shows a big rise in the numbers for mammals, with primates being the large order most threatened by extinction. The situation is worse in the vast areas where most remaining apes and monkeys live, outside the parks and reserves. In Africa hundreds of unique and never studied primate populations are being annihilated, and thousands will follow if the current trends continue (Ammann, 1998c; Bowen-Jones et al, 1998; Oates, 1996a; Rose, 1996g).
The risk level for different populations and species varies with their numbers, reproductive vigor, and distribution in range. Declines in the past have been correlated most closely with human population growth and the destruction of habitat. Primate hunting, including apes, has long been recognized as a factor. Eltringham (1984) wrote that "Gorillas and chimps costing several thousand dollars each are captured for zoos and medical research centers, but the quantity killed for food dwarfs the number taken alive." While capture of live apes for research has mostly stopped, a growing body of evidence now shows that shifts in human social and economic practices in the forests of Africa have greatly increased killing for meat. Oates (1996a) concludes "... while the total removal of natural habitat is clearly a major threat to the survival of many African forest primates, an analysis of survey data suggests that human predation tends to have a greater negative impact on primate populations than does selective logging or low-intensity bush-fallow agriculture."
Ammann's (1993, 1996c, 1998b) wide ranging nine year investigation of hunting pressures in and outside the IUCN surveyed project areas strongly indicates that unprotected and unstudied groups of primates -- especially those within 30 km of the expanding network of logging roads and towns -- are being devastated by a burgeoning commercial bushmeat trade. The catalyst of this devastation is growth of the timber industry (Ammann & Pearce, 1995; Ammann, 1996b).
Timber prices and profits are tied to provision of subsidized bushmeat to migrant workers. Every logging town has its modern hunting camp, supplied with European made guns, internationally made ammunition, and men and women who come from towns and cities, hoping to make a living in the forests. With indigenous forest dwellers hired as guides and hand servants, immigrant hunters comb the forests, shooting and trapping. Anything edible is fair game in a market that starts with the wood cutters, truck drivers and camp families who scrape together their meager wages for a porcupine stew (Rose, 1998a). From this captive market base the bushmeat trade stretches all the way to fine restaurants and private feasts in national capitals where more rare and expensive fare is available. Little is done to teach or enforce wildlife laws. Giant pangolin, gorilla, chimpanzee, and elephant are among the animals that are slaughtered in timber concessions and sold for their meat. This scenario is so pervasive, and so driven by human values and economics, that it is the rule wherever logging roads and buildup of timber company personnel occur in the forests.
Most timber executives admit there is a problem and say they are powerless to stop it (Incha, 1996; Splaney, 1998). In the past, logging managers have been reluctant to let outsiders into their concessions, fearing that problems will be uncovered and business disrupted, with no solutions provided. One timber CEO recently invited outside investigators to help police bonobo hunting in a million acre concession in DRCongo (Ammann, 1998a). Horta (1992) wrote that "... almost all the companies in the forestry sector are 'outside the law'. Despite good legislation, there is no effective overseeing of actual operations." The timber industry's reliance on bushmeat to feed loggers and their inability to educate workers and govern their concessions leads to indiscriminate hunting that not only fosters the breaking of laws, but also the breaking of customs. People whose colonial and tribal cultures once enforced taboos against eating apes and monkeys are beginning to try it (Ammann, 1998c).
Even in areas with no logging intrusion, growing demand for chimpanzee and gorilla meat can be substantial. Kano and Asato (1994) compared ape density and hunting pressure from 29 Aka and Bantu villages along the Motaba River area of northeastern Congo Republic and projected a bleak future for the apes. They found that over 80% of their 173 Aka informants were willing to eat gorilla or chimpanzee meat. Among 120 Bantu informants, 70% were willing to eat gorilla meat and 57% would eat chimpanzee. Because more Aka were involved in ape hunting, 40% reported having eaten gorilla or chimp meat in the previous year, while 27% of Bantu had eaten apes in the same period. Aka reports estimate 34 to 60 successful "subsistence" hunters slaughtered 49 gorillas and 103 chimps in 1992. Bantu claimed 7 to 9 hunters took 13 gorillas and 28 chimps that year. Kano & Asato measured ape population density and assert that the survival of both ape populations is at serious risk in this territory, as it is further east for the bonobo "unless a strong system can be established which combines effective protection with the provision of attractive substitutes for ape meat to the local people."
The finding that village hunting of apes in a large habitat area is "unsustainable" when guns are used makes us all the more concerned about the popular and organized commercial bushmeat trade supported by timber industry infrastructure that is feeding and fostering consumer preferences in towns and cities.
If the taste for bushmeat continues to spread across equatorial Africa at its current pace, African primates as a whole may soon be considered threatened by extinction.South of the Motaba River, Hennessey (1995) studied bushmeat commerce around the Congolese city of Ouesso. He reports that 64% of the bushmeat in Ouesso comes "from an 80 km road traveling southwest to a village called Liouesso." There a hunter who specializes in apes was responsible for most of the 1.6 gorilla carcasses sold each week in the Ouesso marketplace. That is over 80 gorillas per year in one city. Hennessey projects that 50 forest elephants were killed annually for meat and ivory in this same study, but only 19 chimpanzees.
Similar Aka-Bantu hunting and long-distance commercial bushmeat trade is described by Wilke et al (1992) in the Sangha region west of Ouesso. There, many hunters preferred trading their meat at Ouesso in order to get a higher price than at logging concessions, confirming the report of Stromayer & Ekobo (1991) that Ouesso and Brazzaville are the ultimate sources of demand. Wilke et al (1992) describe monkey meat for sale, but say nothing about apes. They do recommend that wildlife conservation officers and biologists monitor and protect duiker, primates, and elephants to regulate "the harvest of forest protein."
Ammann & Pearce (1995) reported intense hunting of apes for bushmeat in south-eastern Cameroon, across the border west of Wilke's study site. "The hunters in the Kika, Moloundou and Mabale triangle in Cameroon estimate that around 25 guns are active on any given day and that successful gorilla hunts take place on about 10% of outings. This would result in an estimated kill of up to 800 gorillas a year." These same hunters say they bring out chimpanzee too, half as many as gorillas in this location -- up to 400 per year. While some of this ape meat is sold to logging workers in these forests, most is shipped on logging lorries back to Bertoua and all the way to Yaounde and Douala where a better profit can be made. Ammann (1998a) has confirmed Hennessey's (1995) findings that a small portion of Cameroon bushmeat crosses the border for sale in Ouesso.
Illegal bushmeat including gorilla, chimpanzee, and bonobo in villages near reserves like Lope, Ndoki, and Dja, and in city markets at Yaounde, Bangui, Kinshasa, Pt. Noire, and Libraville, has been photographed by Ammann (1996a, 1997, 1998c; McRae & Ammann, 1997). Traders interviewed in those areas affirm that the fresh meat comes from nearby forests, while smoked viand can travel long distances. It is well known that the scant million people who inhabit the large forested territory of Gabon have a strong palate for bushmeat. Steel (1994) found half the meat sold in Gabon city markets is bushmeat: an estimated $50 million unpoliced trade. Twenty percent of the bushmeat is primates. This includes some apes, which are considered edible by various local tribes. Absent region-wide monitoring of hunting and bushmeat trade, we can only guess the numbers of primates killed to feed the tens of millions of people living in equatorial Africa. There can be little doubt that many more apes are butchered for meat in the lowland forests every year than live captive in all the world's zoos, laboratories and sanctuaries. Perhaps three to six thousand a year.
During extensive discussion with field researchers and conservationists (Rose, 1996c,d,e; Rose & Ammann, 1996), this author found expert consensus predicting that "if the present trend in forest exploitation continues without a radical shift in our approach to conservation, most edible wildlife in the equatorial forests of Africa will be butchered before the viable habitat is torn down" (Rose, 1996g). This conclusion had already been reached by Oates (1996a) and has been confirmed most recently by consensus of the 34 wildlife protection and conservation NGO's participating in the UK Ape Alliance (Bowen-Jones et al, 1998). Even more worrisome is the agreement among primatologists that the varied destructive outcomes of bushmeat commerce have taken crisis proportions (Rose, 1996c). What makes this a crisis is not only the numbers, but the way they develop. Juste et al (1995) crystallize the essence of the crisis: "With the advent of modern firearms, and improved communications and transport, subsistence hunting has given way to anarchic exploitation of wildlife to supply the rapidly growing cities with game.
The key word here is anarchic. Absent an effective political authority, having no cohesive principle, common standard or purpose, the bushmeat trade has exploded into a rush for personal profit not unlike the gold rush that transformed the western portion of the United States in the last century. One timber company executive described it rhetorically: "if you found this hundred franc note lying on the ground, would you pick it up?" (Incha, 1996). Bushmeat is like found money.
Bushmeat commerce grows with the logging industry, but it is founded on the complex cultures of the region. When people see an animal as little more than meat, they will hunt, butcher and eat it with impunity (Cartmill, 1993). Russ Mittermeier (1987) warned us of the pervasive global threat of primate hunting over a decade ago. Jane Goodall (1998) declared that "unless we work together to change attitudes at all levels -- from world leaders to the consumers of illegal bushmeat -- there will be no viable populations of great apes in the wild within 50 years." The day will come when all the logging and transport roads are built, the choice wood is removed, and the migrant hunters have harvested the bushmeat in the 90% of African rain forests which are targeted for exploitation. Then parks and reserves will be the only places left to hunt: they will need to be defended by armies, or abandoned. Just as profiteers seek the last black rhino horn in Zambia, so will raconteurs attempt to buy the last gorilla loin and chimp arm in the Congo basin.
But this destruction is not inevitable. There are forces at work that can stop the slaughter of primates and re-engender the reverence for wildlife that will save the natural heritage of Africa. To capitalize on these forces, we must expand our visions, strategies, and tactics and break free of the narrow ideological biases that still control the traditional field of conservation biology.
HUMAN KINSHIP WITH GREAT APES RAISES THE STAKES>
Human kinship with apes and monkeys is becoming widely accepted in the North and their slaughter and consumption are being seen as murder and cannibalism. This instills conflict in Africans who have overlaid their traditional theistic relation to nature with colonial European attitudes that view wildlife as an exploitable commodity. It also challenges proponents of human dominion and reductionist science.
The view of apes and other non-human primates is changing radically outside of Africa. In the North, especially among the more educated, a rising sense of kinship with apes and monkeys is almost palpable. Primatologists have seen many primates exhibit elaborate and exquisite gentility, intelligence and grace, as well as humor, affection, cunning, and some familiar forms of cruelty and sloth
(eg: Cheney & Seyfarth, 1992; deWaal, 1990; Fouts & Mills, 1997; King, 1994; Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin, 1996; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Biologists have uncovered evidence of close genetic kinship between humans and apes (eg: Diamond, 1993). Primate studies are making inroads into fields that were traditionally human focused -- most importantly politics, law and ethics (eg: Allen & Bekoff, 1997, Cavalieri & Singer, 1994; de Waal, 1996). These discoveries are being told through magazines and books, television and cinema, and in daily newsprint to a worldwide audience.The explosion of media and entertainment industry interest in non-human primates reflects a deep fascination with our primate heritage. The Vatican has softened its position on evolution calling it "a hypothesis to consider" and many people around the world are now able to think of themselves as "the third chimpanzee." Television programmers have made wildlife and nature documentaries a mainstay of many people's evening entertainment fare, and the apes are featured most often. These developments ease our crossing of the chasm between hominid and hominoid, help us build personal and intellectual bonds with apes, and strengthen the impetus to preserve and protect all of wildlife.
This burgeoning of natural kinship is not limited to our order. Schaller (1995) describes the phenomenon: "The recent decades have been a turning point, indeed a revolution in our relationship with animals. Humans have begun to overcome cross-species barriers, achieving intimacy with hump-backed whales, chimpanzees, lions, mountain sheep, wolves ... the gorilla, of course, is more than an animal. These apes are part of human heritage. Our kin."
This author's research on natural epiphanies (Rose, 1996b) adds to a large body of evidence and belief that humans are endowed with an innate fascination and need to relate to other living beings (Kellert & Wilson, 1993). E. O. Wilson (1984) called this drive "biophilia". Many of us can identify the effects of biophilia on our own life experience. It motivated us to begin our careers and inspires us to continue them. Analysis of Profound Interspecies Events (PIEs: Rose, 1994a) identified factors that influence shifts in world-view and behavior from human and ego-centered to life and eco-centered. Lay people and professionals in primatology (Rose, 1995c) and other wildlife related fields (Rose, 1995b) show changes in their world view (Rose, 1996f) that depend on the persons' latent and active value structures. Overall, people are most affected and inspired by direct interaction with animals. Communion with nature changes minds and action to a lesser degree. Empirical study is a prime mover in very few people's lives. These findings match the broad based studies of Stephen Kellert (1996) on lay people's attitudes and values towards wildlife and nature.
Scientific epiphanies are rare among lay people, and seldom move them. The intense and tedious work of hypothesis testing sets the stage for discoveries that are usually more profound in the finding than the telling. In part this reflects the narrow focus of empirical research, as well as the obtuseness of technical jargon. More fundamental, very few people are endowed with the scientific value set that reflects "the urge for precise study and systematic inquiry of the natural world, and the related belief that nature can be understood (best) through empirical study" (Kellert, 1993, p. 47). Personally grounded tales of the way hominids evolved or how apes learn and socialize, for example, excite far more people than reports on the measurement of old bones and new behaviors.
A Naturalistic "sense of fascination, wonder, and awe derived from an intimate experience of nature's diversity" (Kellert, 1993, p. 45) is more prevalent and has a greater impact on world-view. This value set is reflected in biography with disclaimers of ineffability, as when Goodall (1988, p. 30) writes "... no words of mine could ever convey ... the almost mystical awareness of beauty and eternity that accompanies certain treasured moments." The recounting of these spiritual experiences enhances one's charismatic impact on the public -- a new breed of conservation activists capitalizes on this attraction in the growing "deep ecology" movement. But there is little new about communing with nature in spiritual retreat. The popularity of American "nature poets" like Muir, Thoreau, Whitman, Snyder, Merwin, and countless others is replicated in every country, according to cultural preferences of style and focus. These are the human icons of pristine wilderness.
Traditional conservationists prefer this distant admiration, for themselves and the public. Many claim, with good reason, that to promote a wide-angle hands-off reverence is better for the environment. We all have bemoaned the loss of habitat trampled by tourist safaris seeking close encounters. Primates in wild settings are susceptible to human diseases transmitted by the most careful of observers and habituated apes are presumed more vulnerable to poaching. But impersonal connection with wildlife doesn't satisfy the vast majority of people. The biggest NGO's can't fund their programs with detached advertising. Mass mail campaigns featuring close-ups of tigers, elephants, and mountain gorilla babies said to be the last of their kind in the wild and in need of immediate protection are used. Yes, we humans do need to relate to nature in its great glory, and we are incensed and upset with the idea that it is vanishing. But when it comes to taking action, we are tribal primates foremost. Our close kin come first.
It is real and imagined personal interaction and bonding with animals that effects nature friendly shifts in world-view most often among Northerners (Rose, 1996a, 1996f). This correlates with established findings on the preeminence of the humanistic value structure which "reflects deep emotional attachment to individual elements of the natural environment ... usually directed at ... the larger vertebrates" (Kellert, 1993, p. 52). Urban humans in particular are starved for contact with animals that will help take us beyond our restrictive human-dominated worlds (Rose, 1995a). The wish for personal connection with another species attracted a record number of web surfers to chat with Koko the gorilla -- fifth largest internet dialogue in history. Emotional need fills lecture halls with people who want to hear Jane Goodall talk about her friendship with David Graybeard and her respect for the matriarch Flo. Goodall (1995) says the most powerful impact comes from stories about apes helping humans out of dire straits. The gorilla Binti who saved a child that fell into her zoo enclosure was voted one of People Magazine's "Twenty Five Most Intriguing People of 1996". People who experience a non-human "perform an extreme act of kinship" (PEAK scenario) on their behalf report deep lasting transformations of outlook that manifest in acts of devotion by the person to animals of the same type and that can generalize to other like species and to the whole natural world (Rose, 1994a, 1998b).
Thus among wildlife professionals and lay people in North America and Europe a growing constituency is making the crucial shift from concern about other primates to the more enduring position of identity with them and their plight. These people's stake in primate conservation is personal, holistic, and expansive. Many millions consider great apes as "my kin": they judge the killing of chimps and gorillas to be murder, and eating them to be cannibalism. We cannot ignore this potent group, nor should we. The northern public's new sense of kinship with great apes raises the stakes: it demands that we who conserve wild primates do so for all apes and monkeys, not just for the few who are fortunate to live in our favorite parks and reserves.
In the first section of this treatise we reviewed evidence that in equatorial Africa primates are treated increasingly as commercial food -- a trend that is in severe conflict with the above described burgeoning of primate identity in the North. Ironically, the human values and attitudes that support the bushmeat commerce come from mal-adaptation of old-style colonial world-views. In much of central Africa "a general pattern of apathy, fatalism, and materialism towards nature and wildlife" prevails (Kellert, 1996, p. 149). Most contemporary Africans have lost their traditional "theistic" reverence for wildlife and have taken on the harshest northern utilitarian view (Mordi, 1991). With the advent of cash economy, colonial religion, and central government, "tribal values of conserving and protecting nonhuman life are rendered spiritually inoperable, while new ecological and ethical foundations for sustaining nature have not emerged" (Kellert, 1996, p. 152).
Economic incentives appear to be prepotent in this milieu. This holds for people struggling to survive and for the more wealthy Africans who exhibit the "what can it buy me?" attitude typical of people who have recently pulled out of poverty. Conservation financiers are pitted against exploitive profiteers to vie directly for economic and social control of wildlife habitat. This competition is on a playing field that favors exploiters who hire and pay local people to support the old and unsustainable dominionistic attitude. The field will be leveled and lasting support for conservation prerogatives will come only with a major transformation of African people's wildlife values.
Wherever traditional theistic values are dead and buried, the most viable shifts in attitude for most Africans will be come from instilling humanistic views of wildlife like those emerging in the North. We are not proposing some kind of eco-imperialism which foists colonial Northern values on traditional Africans. The new Northern sense of kinship with other primates is closer to traditional tribal views than the imported colonial dominionistic values now holding sway in Africa. It is an amalgamated kin-totem status that will save the apes in the long run.
In territories where primate eating is not taboo, the people who refuse to eat them do so "because they are too much like us." (Kano & Asato, 1994; Hennessey, 1995). This identity with other primates offers a foundation on which to reconstruct an African conservation ethos that once again reveres wildlife and wilderness, and views humanity as an integral part of the natural order. This author has seen the potential for such change among bushmeat hunters in Cameroon's eastern province (Rose, 1997, 1998a). Most of the people in the bushmeat trade readily say that commercial hunting is a poor way to make a living, not a sought after career but a last choice. Economic factors are less enduring and shift more quickly than personal values, beliefs and taboos.
One veteran hunter who had shot and killed thousands of primates for the commercial trade left hunting for economic incentive, to work in conservation. In his discussions with the author, he described how he had kept a brown monkey in his home. When the monkey grew up and began to break and harm things, the man took him back to the forest from which he had come. "Why didn't you eat him?" I asked. "Because he was my friend, like a child to me -- we do not eat children; we are Christians." He saw nothing morally wrong with hunting other brown monkeys -- just refused to kill or eat one to whom he was bonded. This same man had argued that gorillas are put here by God for us to use as we please. But when I showed him a popular book about a captive gorilla that had adopted a kitten and used sign language (Patterson & Cohn, 1985) he was visibly moved and declared that he wanted to show this to his friends who still hunt apes. He did return to the forest and reports that on at least two occasions he convinced a hunter not to shoot the gorillas they came across. In this situation there was little incentive besides imagined kinship -- the other man gave up at least $80 by putting away his gun. One hunter, one intervention, one reported change in behavior -- not a success, but a sign.
Conservationists employ local people to protect endangered animals from their neighbors who would kill and butcher them, pitting one survival tactic against another (eg: Owens & Owens, 1992). Security for these conflicting factions hinges on the relative stability of two industries -- bushmeat and conservation. Some people gain status by protecting live primates in situ or caring for them in captivity. Others are valued for their ability to track and bring ape and monkey meat back for the cooking pot. But status gained from commercial hunting is low in much of Africa, as is the income. Most hunters are not licensed and thus operate in gray market circles -- some are admired for their daring and endurance, but not for much else. People who succeed in primate protection and husbandry are better reimbursed than poachers and meat traders. They are also better accepted in most quarters, especially among the more educated professionals. As in the North, African's who come to identify with fellow primates undergo shifts in values towards nature and expansion of world view. Conant (1997) found this broadening of self or ego reported by primate caretakers at Limbe Wildlife Sanctuary in Cameroon. Expanding the ego to include something of primate nature is an impetus to seek greater self and social actualization. This is when things really begin to change.
In summary, personal perception is a river we navigate, some in side eddies and whirlpools, others mainstream. Very few people are inspired or outraged into protecting natural heritage by impersonal arguments about the ecological or scientific values of biodiversity. Utilitarian schemes for natural resource management that allow "sustainable harvesting" of apes and other kindred animals won't be tolerated by people who identify themselves as part of the natural order. In our hierarchy of human needs (Maslow, 1993), from survival to actualization of self and society, we can be fulfilled by other animals in almost any way we design. The growing millions of people who will make or break our conservation efforts are moved first and foremost by kinship with living animals. Through that vital personal identity will come the designs for social change that can save African wildlife.
PRIMATE CONSERVATION IS A GLOBAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Conservation is a global social movement. Major paradigm shifts are underway that require dramatic changes in strategy and practice. We must turn from saving biodiversity to restoring human-nature biosynergy. Experts from business, religion, and the applied social sciences will take the lead from biologists to construct the next Zeitgeist. We must do more than save wildlife and wilderness. We must build a Global Life Alliance that can safeguard the world ecology, develop eco-social harmony, and re-inspire the natural spirit of humanity itself.Psychologists who study the self-fulfilled end of humanity report that human potential is realized most in those who serve others (eg: Rogers, 1961; Rose & Auw, 1974). It seems that we become more of ourselves when we are more than selfish. We get bigger, inclusive, multi-faceted, personally enriched by the act of giving. When people gather and organize into groups to realize their potential altruistically, we have the rudiments of a social movement. Conservation is a massive global social movement. As detailed above, people are attracted to this movement first for interpersonal reasons. They expect conservation to provide them with a deep connection to animals and with personal actualization from doing benevolent service. With this impetus, the conservation movement will not only protect nature; it will change human myth, ritual, and institutions.
In much of the world myth is now created on film and video, and transmitted by the commercial entertainment industry. Producers of prime time news decide which organization to support, and who will be promoted as a celebrity. For most people the characters on TV and in movies are the only manifestations of heroic archetypes they will ever know. The public is attuned to the attractive power of fame; leaders of social movements can't be fully effective without name and face recognition. The conservation movement is no exception. We will gain more support for this cause smiling at TV cameras than staring into microscopes. Most people are induced to spend their hard earned savings and donate their valuable time by good stories, not good statistics. Accepting this truth , we can be strategic in what we say and when we smile.
Call for new leadership. The film "Gorillas in the Mist" is shown in school rooms across America promoting Dian Fossey as martyr to the cause. Jane Goodall's impressive persona is revered by millions of people as the Mother Theresa of chimpanzees. With less success, Birute Galdikas has been promoted as the angel of the orangutan. These women are public icons: we celebrate whatever success they have achieved and offer to help them achieve more. But they and their torch bearers must, in return, celebrate and support others who conserve and protect primates and their habitat. This social movement needs scores of conservationists with celebrity status, not two or three.
The opportunity is here. Films and popular books about primatologists and the life ways of non-human primates are beginning to proliferate in the northern marketplace. This reflects and raises public concern. Good Natured (deWaal, 1996) and Demonic Males (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996) are contrasting bookends on a growing shelf of texts that make apes and monkeys all the more relevant to human society. This written myth compels the next generation of primatologists to demand ritual involvement in the world of apes and monkeys -- to go beyond classroom talk and make contact with non-human primate kin. Grad students empathize with caged macaques. Zoo workers banter with baboons, sing to siamangs. Sanctuary volunteers cuddle and mother orphan chimps. Ecotourists find themselves reflected in the gorilla's eye.
In reaction some traditional biologists say that human contact renders the animals useless to science, puts them at risk of disease, and should be avoided at all cost. Some risks are real, but the cost of total avoidance will be the death knell of such scientists as players -- we must cope with and conquer the risks in order to keep up with the social movement. Ultimately, expansion of primate conservation into an interactive multi-discipline imbedded in a global social movement calls for new leaders. People with narrow zoological perspectives must relinquish roles that they cannot fulfill.
Some people claim that humanistic approaches present a false view of primates, foster dangerous anthropomorphism, and impede practical scientific work. Ironically there is no scientific evidence to back these arguments. Personal opinion as to what is false, dangerous and practical rules these debates. This author has argued for the inclusion of all factions from ethics to zoology, finance to religion, in a collective reality that promotes the broadest possible consensus of views and tactics for optimizing primate conservation (Rose, 1996a). Scientific method is made to test hypotheses, not conserve wildlife. Biological scientists have earned no special credibility nor have they shown exceptional competence in this largely human social, spiritual, and economic domain, either by training or by past effectiveness in the conservation effort. It is time to recognize that those who measure environmental destruction are not often prepared or able to do much about it.
The conservation movement is a very human affair. It is not just about little groups of hairy animals. It is about big societies of hungry humans whose greed and ignorance are putting all of life at great risk. We need big changes based on big visions. We need to enlist the aid of the most wise and benevolent, the most wealthy and powerful people and agencies in the world. Leaders of the conservation movement will come from three forces: business, religion, and ecosocial practice.
Business endows. The general public is aware of the promise of conservation, but not the problems. The scientific paradigm that publishes only successes is a poor way to do business.
Conservation donors realize that we need help, but we have been afraid to tell them how much. We have asked for thousands when we need millions; fought with one another over small grants when we should have been collaborating for huge endowments; traded science deficits when we should have raided military and private excess. A year's salary from one sports super-star could solve a lot of bushmeat problems. The budget for one US stealth bomber could support the protection of most endangered monkeys for a decade. Business leadership from major corporations could make primate conservation a global success story. The richest man in the USA could endow the future of the remaining apes with a fraction of his wealth, power, and corporate imagination.Imagine what it would be like if Bill Gates sponsored the IUCN Primate Specialist Group. A Microsoft approach to conservation would invent new ways to market primates in situ -- virtual ecotourism, interactive ecology games in real-time, mobile distance learning units linked to school wildlife labs. Web surfers could see their favorite animals and conservationists in action, buy a bushmeat-free meal for a hungry park ranger, adopt an orphan ape, save a monkey troop, protect a forest, give advice to policy makers -- all on-line. Wealthy zoos would have direct banking links to wildlife sanctuaries in habitat countries. Northern foresters would connect on-line with tropical forest officers to share ideas and resources. Interactive networks of financiers, local community members, wildlife law enforcers, exploiters, religious leaders, and scores of other stakeholders would foster a positive global outlook linking the varied elements of the conservation movement.
If Gates and Mittermeier became partners, people would send ape and monkey holograms to their loved ones for Earth Day via the internet and donate the profit to conservation programs. This entrepreneurial approach is a far cry from the defensive postures of traditional conservationists with besieged island outlooks and self-fulfilling fears of failure. When a wildlife officer in Cameroon voiced his wish that 30% of the remaining forests become protected areas (Yadji, 1996), a senior conservationist told the press that it was unrealistic to protect that much territory ... 10% was enough. Imagine a strategic planner in Microsoft saying lets just go for one third of the business the client is offering us, it's all we can handle. Of course most biologists can not handle it. Perhaps that is why they often produce "conservation plans" that have no timetables, no assigned responsibilities, no specific objectives or audit timelines, and thus no follow through and no results. Academia does good analysis. Business endows effective action.
The full force of the international business community can capitalize on the social movement and make living wildlife and wilderness more profitable than cut wood and butchered animals. But there are other forces that will take the social movement even farther. Business-like conservation (Ammann, 1998b) is necessary but not sufficient to assure the restoration of African wildlife and wilderness. Entrepreneurs who devise business projects and managers who pursue measured objectives may deliver profit without protection, sanctuary without well-being. To pursue altruistic goals that assure humane outcomes requires moral leadership. To integrate the needs and capacities of diverse human and natural stakeholders into successful programs that produce synergistic results requires eco-social competence. Both these fundamental imperatives must be brought to bear on the conservation movement. Well endowed action is not necessarily right action (Hawley, 1993).
Religion inspires. Leaders of the major religions are organizing and acting on behalf of the environment. The Christian Environmental Council in North America has used Bible citations to challenge corporate environmental ethics and to provide authority for proactive positions on crucial elements of ecological justice -- endangered species protection, environmental precedence over private property claims, and control of global climate change (Alexander, 1998). The U.S. Catholic Conference launched its Environmental Justice Program in 1993 and with the new edicts of the Pope, will expand it into their churches and parishes worldwide. Inter-faith groups are proliferating with projects to foster ecological renewal, responding to and amplifying the global call for "love and care for the Creation" (Rose-Erejon, 1998).
To put the potential impact of these developments in perspective it is important to note that over half the charity dollars spent in the USA go to religious groups compared to less than 2% for conservation organizations. Donations to religious institutions for benevolent stewardship of the natural world will outstrip the current level of gifts to secular environmental NGOs many fold in the next decade. But it is not money alone that makes religion a major force in the conservation movement. More important will be the deep and enduring commitment of billions of people whose concern for nature will have a fresh and enduring outlet. Religious groups enter the conservation arena with double motivation: after the humanistic attachment to animals as kin, the second most prevalent value towards nature in the North is the moralistic, which encompasses "strong feelings of affinity, ethical responsibility, and even reverence for the natural world" (Kellert, 1993, 53).
This will be a crucial balance to the business force. Utilitarian self-interest is too easily corrupted. Business involvement in conservation, no matter how financially astute, must become morally and humanely driven. Organized religion is strong enough to do it. Academic science is not. Scientists and business people with anti-religion sentiment will have to change or step aside, as this force emerges. Objectivism that trivializes nature will have to be dampened as well. It is the moral and humane values that will empower and sustain the salvation of humanity and nature.
The expansion of religious concern for the natural world warrants support for other reasons besides the balance it provides to business. Perhaps the optimum use of wildlife and wilderness is the religious and spiritual use -- to love and care for the natural environment (The Creation) by prayer, meditation, and altruistic service is about as synergistic and sustainable an involvement as one can imagine. To establish sacred forests around the planet where well run spiritual retreats are offered to religious devotees can sanctify and safeguard more wild places and protect more wildlife than all the biodiversity reserves and entrepreneurial developments extant. This will foster an explosion of exceptionally low-impact pilgrimages which swamp conventional aesthetic and adventure tourism.
I urge members of IUCN, and all concerned conservationists, to accept and embrace this new force. A founder of conservation biology, Michael Soule (1993) urged the same when he declared the need for "a religion-like movement ... that ... can create the political momentum required to overcome the greed ... and the anthropocentrism that underlies the intentional abuse of nature."A first step in this regard would be to lobby for expansion in the focus of CITES. When the CITES "scripture" was written in 1973 there was little or no representation from the religious institutions. Crucial points of view regarding the value of wild fauna and flora must be added to the CITES Preamble by altering the first two sentences and inserting these underlined words:
RECOGNIZING that wild fauna and flora in their many wonderful
beautifuland varied forms are an irreplaceable part of the natural systems of the earth which must be protected for this time and the futuregenerationsto come;CONSCIOUS of the ever-growing value of wild fauna and flora from aesthetic, cultural, economic, recreational, religious, spiritual, and scientific points of view.
In the first line, substitution of wonderful for beautiful is more than cosmetic -- it signifies the deep spiritual power of the natural world, inclusive of, but not limited to the aesthetic. This invites the vast public that values more than surface appearance and variety to join. The shift to protecting flora and fauna for this time and the future expands to include respect for nature's intrinsic values, and not merely its worth to the generations of humanity.
In line two we have added religious to honor the views of countless peoples and societies that rely on the presence of wild flora and fauna in their rituals and rites. The religious dimension has sometimes been included in 'cultural', but it is better separated. Cultural is used for homogeneous small groups and societies. Our great global religions are trans-cultural institutions which, as the religious environmental movement demonstrates, have many needs to connect with natural creation. A penultimate need is the spiritual. But again, that is not solely the domain of cultures, nor of religions. We must add the spiritual point of view to honor the needs of individuals, families, and small groups for deep communion with those intangible powers of natural creation that sustain us all.
These changes are proposed seriously -- in hopes that they will be made as part of a conscious effort to include religious and spiritual concerns in all the arenas where the CITES accords are at play. With moral leadership of the world religious community inspiring business endowment of right action, conservationists can set aside worst case scenarios and shift to a "save them all" strategy. The leaders of the new conservation movement won't settle for saving small pockets of those species now said to be closest to extinction, nor will it continue to look aside while bushmeat orphans die.The new leaders will challenge the narrow species fixation itself, and ask that all animal communities under threat of destruction be protected with emergency effort, while work is done to endow massive and far reaching life assurance systems to safeguard primates and other endangered orders. With the strategic focus of wildlife conservation shifted from gazetting biological arks to protecting all the major elements of natural creation from the human flood, a far different set of missions, goals and objectives will be pursued by a new kind of conservation professional. Imagine the tactics and talent required to conserve the Congo Basin ecosystem and the primate order for all time as elements of Eden that are spiritually sacrosanct and financially secure. Those who lead us into this endeavor will need many thousands of committed workers to pursue the worthy success.
Eco-social practice achieves. Endowed by international business and inspired by global religion, the conservation activist of the future will spring from a marriage of ecology and applied social sciences. These eco-social practitioners will become the third force -- the institutes and action teams that design, build, and manage local, regional and global conservation organizations and programmes. The traditional conservation community should find this third force more acceptable than business and religion. Anthropologists and ecologists have collaborated to study and help indigenous peoples in wild environments. But this author's experience is the opposite. Most conservation biologists admit their ignorance about business and recognize the power of religious institutions. But everyone seems to think they are experts in analyzing and effecting social change.
Most traditional conservation workers believe that the problems they see are paramount and the solutions they know are enough. Too many are looking for nails to pound simply because they have a hammer. When asked about past failures, the answer is "we didn't hammer hard or long enough." A case in point is the Population and Habitat Viability Analysis (PHVA). This program devised by zoologists and computer analysts has resulted in over a hundred workshops in habitat countries attempting to help local wildlife agencies to use biological information to build national conservation plans for high profile species like cheetah and chimpanzee. The result, to date, is mostly slick reports gathering dust.
The latest PHVA, for mountain gorillas, brought together gorilla experts and wildlife agents from Uganda, Rwanda and DRCongo. Given the overwhelming human problems in those territories, the idea of biologists organizing to protect gorillas there is quite improbable. The IUCN Conservation Breeding Specialists Group (CBSG) that promotes these programs did include some anthropologists and a management professor. A viable plan however, would require experts in community and organization development, cross-cultural relations, agribusiness, eco-social conflict management, peacemaking, small business finance, justice systems, law enforcement, and more. Expertise also must expand beyond zoological specialists in charismatic mega-fauna and include forest, farm, and urban ecologists. One reason CBSG doesn't do this is because it and its financial supporters are inspired by the salvation of wildlife, not people. A hammer looking for nails.
The idea of protecting enclaves of apes without helping human society is not feasible. What is needed is to study, assess, and promote continual synergistic relationships among ecological and social forces, processes, and stakeholders -- to assure that both humanity and nature will thrive.
Some years ago I helped develop and implement a long term action research (LTAR) program that produced major changes and improvements in the USA's largest health maintenance organization (Stebbins et al, 1982). As with PHVA, we began by collecting data on problems and opportunities, though in our situation we gathered input from thousands of physicians, nurses, administrators, and employees: not only chosen experts. The time and expense to survey, validate, and gain workforce consensus on the first round of data was multiplied at least fifty-fold by the follow-on activities. If the LTAR model were used for mountain gorilla conservation, putting the findings to work in a planned way could require millions of dollars for a solid 3-year startup effort. That seems like a lot of money to field biologists. Not to the business community. The Los Angeles Zoo is spending near five million dollars to build a facility to house 13 chimpanzees. Donors are willing to put up those funds for apes that they can visit and enjoy. If we can develop ways for apes that live in African forests to touch and inspire us, we'll be as generous on their behalf.
Being more experienced than most primatologists at inspiring the public, Jane Goodall and her colleagues at Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) have embraced a promising synergistic approach. The Roots and Shoots Program is established with the kind of compound mission that can succeed -- to encourage grass roots programs that help people, animals, and the environment in Africa and in donor nations. JGI started the first Roots and Shoots projects in relatively easy locations where success was more likely, but did not shun the requirement of complex objectives. Neither has Goodall ignored the public's need for spiritual inspiration or the value of major financial and political supporters. JGI is now seeking to understand and become involved in areas where apes are on the menu, facing the huge commercial bushmeat challenge.
Still, with all her celebrity status, the financial practices and development capacities of Roots and Shoots are inadequate. The forces of big business and organized religion will be needed to underwrite and inspire the undertaking. But it will be up to eco-social developers, the third new force in conservation, to deliver the long term success. That is the biggest challenge of all. Endowing and inspiring are easy, compared to doing the job.The expertise required to produce effective eco-social synergy in places like equatorial Africa is diverse and scattered at best. Yes, there are professionals competent in all the fields mentioned above, from community builders to law enforcers. But to recruit and organize the best of them to work together for African wildlife conservation is a Herculean effort -- the critical path in this whole social movement.
This author has drafted programme designs for multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary, multi-level community based ecosynergy projects to control bushmeat commerce and develop sustainable alternatives with people in Cameroon. Response from specialists has been consistent -- "too complex, too costly, too many disciplines, too much territory to cover." Advice is common -- "start with a simple community based pilot study to stop poaching in a small wildlife reserve."When I ask "what will a project in a small reserve tell us about commercial hunting in huge logging concessions feeding urban markets?" many reply "start where you can succeed." They overlook the fact that success in small isolated projects is short-lived (Western et al, 1994). When I ask "how can a forest community stop poaching without outside support?" they say "governments and timber companies must enforce the law." They fail to explain how exploiters and politicians will be taught to infuse conservation values, develop eco-social change projects, and govern and monitor huge concessions. Reaction from systems-oriented professionals is better: most recognize the value of large multi-variate programmes, but few are enthusiastic about joining interdisciplinary teams.
The mission of the new conservation movement will become the promotion of eco-social synergy. But to pursue that mission, methods for achieving synergy among teams of eco-social professionals and representatives of stakeholder communities must be invented and installed. The barriers and prejudices that keep us apart and in conflict must be overcome first. If physical and cultural anthropologists are still at odds, how much more effort will be needed to unite sociologists, biologists, theologists, entrepreneurs and economists? If WWF, WCS, and WSPA are competing, how can we expect to build a truly unified Ape Alliance, let alone a Global Life Alliance?
We have no choice. The old approach of basic science that tests uni-factored theory and method in controlled settings won't work. The free enterprise model with wildlife and biodiversity focused NGOs competing for limited market share has failed. The social movement that has engulfed conservation is calling for international support by business and religion of regional and global change programmes that will maximize the salvation of humanity and nature. To respond to this call, we will need scores of professionals with the courage and the will to collaborate with strange bedfellows in places where exploitation, migration, and conflagration are destroying people, wildlife and environment. Nothing about it will be easy. After all, we are fighting for life.
Conclusion: Conservation Must Serve and Synergize Humanity and Nature
Fast and durable success will come to innovative conservationists who work directly with the people involved in expanding human commerce -- poachers and traders, suppliers and producers, exploiters and consumers, leaders and rulers. These proactive partnerships will invent socially and ecologically synergistic programmes to satisfy the human needs that now drive the commercial extraction and consumption of fauna and flora in Africa. Cadres of devoted eco-social practitioners, inspired and endowed by religion and business, will take over center stage from the lone field biologists and anthropologists who have served as long suffering crusaders for wildlife. Media will expand beyond romantic images of scientist saints rescuing individual apes and will celebrate the entrepreneurs, educators, and innovators who help local and indigenous people to improve the quality of life by returning to a reverential and synergistic relationship with the environment.
The task of living in wild places to track gorillas and chimpanzees will take on huge added responsibility as synergistic conservation proliferates. Teams of professionals and community leaders will collaborate to convert poachers to protectors, monitor forest product and service sustainability, and implement eco-social improvement projects. The study of non-human biology and behavior will be one of the forest services sustained in the long term by practical interventions to transform human morality and effect eco-social accountability. Some fallen idols and abandoned adventures will be mourned. But as time passes the sense of loss will be supplanted by the satisfaction that will come from saving and enriching the lives of far far more African primates than we can ever know.
This satisfaction will accrue to a general public in Africa and around the world that has claimed its kinship with non-human primates through personal interaction and supports the social movement to save wildlife and nature as our moral obligation and spiritual need. It will be known by all that a perpetually rich and thriving African rain forest with its apes and other ancestors alive and well is worth far more now and in the future than bundles of wood and bushmeat. Beyond the oxygen and medicine that the forests produce, and the lush beauty and mystery they provide, they give us profound insight into our identity. It is, after all, out of Africa that we hominids came. It is in Africa that we discover who we are and thus face our potential for being more than selfish humans ruling and consuming a vanishing natural world.
In summary, the conservation Zeitgeist of the 21st Century will explode into a humane and moral social movement which will be implemented by competent eco-social practitioners and guided by 5 strategic imperatives. 1) Social and moral leaders will promote humanity's profound obligation to conserve wildlife and to restore the natural world. 2) Political and economic authority will place conservation on a par with human rights and welfare. 3) Conservationists will shift from measuring biodiversity to ensuring the eco-social synergy of humanity and nature. 4) Demand for religious and spiritual values of nature will overtake utilitarian exploitation and assure sustainable development. 5) All wildlife habitats will be considered sacrosanct, and all human intrusion and involvement will be managed in a moral businesslike way for the global good.
The success of this great new social movement, this Global Life Alliance, will do more than save wildlife and wilderness. It will safeguard the world ecology, restore eco-social synergy, and re-inspire the natural spirit of humanity itself. As founders of the movement we must work together with a wealth of colleagues and fellow travelers, always in reverence, to celebrate the fulfillment of our natural origins and human destiny in the vast and wonderful Creation that unfolds and evolves on this remarkable planet.
References
Alexander, A. (1998). History of the Christian Environmental Council, talk to Inter-Religious Council, Mexico, April.
Allen, C. & Bekoff, M (1997). Species of Mind: The Philosophy & Biology of Cognitive Ethology, MIT, Boston.
Ammann, K. (1993-4) Orphans of the forest (Parts I & II). SWARA, Nov-Dec : 16-19 & Jan-Feb: Pp. 13-14.
Ammann, K., (1994). The bushmeat babies, BBC Wildlife, Oct.: 16-24.
Ammann, K. (1996a) Primates in peril, Outdoor Photographer, February.
Ammann, K. (1996b) Timber and bushmeat industries are linked throughout west/central Africa. Talk at seminaire sur l'impact de l'exploitation forestiere sur la faune sauvage, Bertoua, Cameroon, April.
Ammann, K. (1996c) Halting the bushmeat trade: Saving the great apes. Talk at World Congress for Animals, Wash. DC, June.
Ammann, K. (1997) Gorillas. Insight Topics, Apa Publications (HK) Ltd., Hong Kong.
Ammann, K. (1998a) The conservation status of the bonobo in the one million hectare Siforzal/Danzer logging concession in Central D.R.Congo. Website: http://biosynergy.org/bushmeat/
Ammann. K. (1998b) Conservation in central Africa: a more business-like approach. African Primates, in review.
Ammann, K. (1998c) Personal correspondence & communication; 1988 to present, Hermosa Beach, CA
Ammann, K. & Pearce, J. (1995) Slaughter of the Apes: How the tropical timber industry is devouring Africa's great apes. World Society for the Protection of Animals, London.
Baillie, J. and Groombridge,B.(eds.), (1996), IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, IUCN’s Searchable Animal Database, http//www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/index.html.
Bowen-Jones et al, (1998). The African Bushmeat Trade: A Recipe for Extinction, Unpubl. Ms, Ape Alliance, London.
Cartmill, M. (1993) A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting & Nature through History. Harvard U. Press, Cambridge.
Cavalieri, P., & Singer, P. (1993). The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity, St. Martin’s Press, N. Y.
Cheney, D. L. & Seyfarth, R. M. (1992). How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species, U Chicago Press.
Conant, M., (1997). Local Attitudes and Beliefs in Relation to Primates and the Bushmeat Trade in Limbe, Cameroon: A Pilot Study in Values Assessment. Yale U. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (unpubl. ms.).
de Waal, F. (1990). Chimpanzee Politics, Harvard Press, Boston.
de Waal, F. (1996), Good Natured: Origins of Right & Wrong in Humans & Other Animals, Harvard Press, Boston.
Daimond, J. (1993) The Third Chimpanzee, Harper-Perennial Library, New York.
Eltringham, S.K. (1984) Wildlife Resources and Economic Development, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Fouts, R. & Mills, S. T. (1997). Next of Kin: What Chimps Have Taught Me About Who We Are, William-Morrow, 1997.
Goodall, J. (1988) In the Shadow of Man, Houghton-Miflin, Boston, p. 30.
Goodall, J. (1995) Personal communication, Los Angeles, April.
Goodall, J. (1998) Quote in The African Bushmeat Trade: A Recipe for Extinction, Press Report, Ape Alliance, London.
Gray, G.G. (1993) Wildlife and People: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Ecology, University of Illinois Press, Chicago.
Hawley, J. A. (1993). Reawakening the Spirit in Work, Barrett-Koehler, San Francisco.
Hennessey, A. B. (1995) A Study of the Meat Trade in Ouesso, Republic of Congo. GTZ, Brazzaville.
Horta, K., 1992, Logging in the Congo: Massive fraud threatens the forests. World Rainforest Report 24.
Incha Productions / ZSE-TV (1996) Twilight of the Apes, ZSE-TV, Johannesburg (Video: 25 min.).
Juste, J., Fa, J.E., Del Val, J.P., and Castroviejo, J., 1995, Market dynamics of bushmeat species in Equatorial Guinea, Journal of Applied Ecology, 32: 454-67.
Kano, T. and Asato, R. (1994). Hunting pressure on chimpanzees and gorillas in the Motaba River area, northeastern Congo, African Study Monographs, 15 (3): 143-162, November.
Kellert, S.R.(1993) The biological basis for human values of nature. Pp. 42-47 in The Biophilia Hypothesis, Kellert, S.R. and Wilson, E.O. (eds.), Island Press, Washington D.C..
Kellert, S.R. (1996) The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society, Island Press, Washington D.C.
Kellert, S.R. and Wilson, E.O. (1993) The Biophilia Hypothesis, Island Press, Washington D.C.
King, B. J. (1995) The Information Continuum, SAR Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Maslow, A (1993) The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Penquin-Arkana, New York.
McRae, M. & Ammann, K. (1997) Road kill in Cameroon. Pp. 36-47, 74-5 in Natural History Magazine, 106, 1.
Melloh, J. (1996 - 1998) Personal communication, tapes & journals, Bertoua & Yaounde, Cameroon.
Mittermeier, R. A. (1987) Effects of hunting on rain forest primates. Pp. 109-146 in Primate Conservation in the Tropical Rain Forest, Alan R. Liss, New York.
Mordi, R., 1991, Attitudes toward wildlife in Botswana, New York, Garland.
Oates, J.F. (1996a) Habitat Alteration, hunting, and the conservation of folivorous primates in African forests. Australian Journal of Ecology, 21, 1-9.
Oates, J.F.. (1996b) African Primates: Status Survey & Action Plan (Revised), IUCN, Gland.
Owens, D. & Owens, M.(1992) The Eye of the Elephant: Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
Patterson, F. & Cohn, R. H. (1985). Koko's Kitten, Scholastic, New York.
Rogers, C.R. (1961). On Becoming a Person, Houghton-Miflin, New York.
Rose, A. L. (1994a) Description and analysis of profound interspecies events. Proceedings of XVth Congress of
International Primatological Society, Bali, Indonesia.
Rose, A. L., (1995a). Science, nature, and the urban primate. Abstract in Proceedings of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, California State U. at Fullerton.
Rose, A. L., (1995b). Epiphanies in ethology effect the ethos of conservation. Abstract in Handbook of the 24th International Ethological Conference, Honolulu.
Rose, A. L. (1995c) Talking to the animals: the role of personal experience in primate research, caretaking, & conservation. Proceedings of the 5th Annual ChimpanZoo Conference, Jane Goodall Institute / U. Arizona.
Rose, A. L. (1996a) Orangutans, science and collective reality. Pp. 29-40 in The Neglected Ape, Nadler, Galdikas, Sheeran, & Rosen (Eds),Plenum Press, New York.
Rose, A. L., (1996b) Natural epiphanies and the practice of conservation. Paper and workshop at the Durrell Institue of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury.
Rose, A. L. (1996c) Commercial exploitation of great ape bushmeat. Pp. 18-20 in Ngoufo, R., Pearce, J., Yadji, B., Guele, D., & Lima, L (Ed's), Rapport du seminaire sur l'impact de l'exploitation forestiere sur la faune sauvage, Cameroon MINEF & WSPA, Bertoua.
Rose, A. L. (1996d) The African forest bushmeat crisis: Report to ASP. African Primates, IUCN/SSC, 2(1): 32-34..
Rose, A. L. (1996e) The bushmeat crisis is conservation's first priority. Talk at IUCN Primate Conservation Roundtable Discussion on an Action Agenda, at XVIth Congress of IPS/ASP, Madison, August.
Rose, A. L., (1996f) Epiphanies with animals and nature transform the human weltbildapparatur. Proceedings of Symposium on Human-Animal Interaction, International Society of Comparative Psychology, Montreal.
Rose, A. L. (1996g) The African great ape bushmeat crisis, Pan Africa News, 3(2): 1-6.
Rose, A. L. (1997) The African primate bushmeat crisis: Action workshop. Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists, San Diego, June.
Rose, A. L. (1998a) Finding paradise in a hunting camp: Turning poachers to protectors. Journal of the Southwestern Anthropological Association, 38(3): 4-11.
Rose, A. L. (1998b) On tortoises, monkeys, & men. In M. Tobias (Ed), Kinship with the Animals, Beyond Words, Hillsboro, Oregon, in press.
Rose, A. L. & Ammann, K. (1996) The African great ape bushmeat crisis. Talk and workshop at XVIth Congress of International Primatological Society / American Society of Primatologists, Madison, August.
Rose, A. L. & Auw, A. (1974) Growing Up Human, Harper & Row, New York.
Rose-Erejon, J. (1998) Personal communication, Mexico City, May.
Savage-Rumbaugh, S. & Lewin, R. (1996) Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind, John Wiley & Sons, NY.
George Schaller (1995). Gentle gorillas, turbulent times, National Geographic, October, pp. 65-83.
Soulé, M. E. (1993) Biophilia : unanswered questions. Pp. 441-455 in Kellert, S. R., and Wilson, E. O. (eds.),
The Biophilia Hypothesis, Island Press, Washington, D.C..
Splaney, L. (1998). Hunting is greater threat to primates than destruction of habitats. New Scientist, March, 18-19.
Stebbins, M., Hawley, J., & Rose, A.L. (1982). Long term action research: a case study. Pp. 105-136 in Margules and Adams (eds) Organization Development in Health Care. Addison-Wesley Publishers, Reading.
Steel, E. A. (1994) Study of the Value and Volume of Bushmeat Commerce in Gabon. WWF & Gabon Ministry of
Forests & Environment, Libreville.
Stromayer, K. & Ekobo, A. (1991). Biological surveys of southwest Cameroon. Wildlife Conservation International.
Western, D., Wright, M.R., and Strum, S.C. (eds.) (1994) Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-Based Conservation, Washington, Island Press.
Wilkie, D. S., Sidle, J. G., and Boundzanga, G. C., 1992, Mechanized logging, market hunting, and a bank loan in Congo, Conservation Biology, 6(4): 570-580.
Wilson, E.O. (1984). Biophilia: The Human Bond with other Species, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Wrangham, R. & Peterson, D. (1996) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Houghton-Mifflin, N. Y.
Yadji, B. (1996) A new dynamic for conservation of wildlife resources. Pp. 4-8 in Ngoufo et al (Ed's), Rapport du seminaire sur l'impact de l'exploitation forestiere sur la faune sauvage, Cameroon MINEF & WSPA, Bertoua.
Draft # 1 -- June 5, 1998
© 1998, Anthony Rose, Hermosa Beach, California USA
Confidential Draft: not for copy or circulaton without permission of author.Readers are invited to contribute ideas and talent to the Biosynergy Institute's Bushmeat Project. Write The Bushmeat Project at P. O. Box 488, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254 or e-mail to discuss how you can help.