Planet Without Apes PDF
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C R A I G B . S T A N F O R D p l a n e t w i t h o u t a p e s PLANET WITHOUT APES PLANET WITHOUT APES CRAIG B. STANFORD The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS lonDon, EnG lAnD 2012 Dedicated to the many individuals around the globe who have devoted their lives to the protection and conservation of the last remaining great apes Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Stanford, Craig B. (Craig Britton), 1956– Planet without apes / Craig B. Stanford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-674-06704-2 (alk. paper) 1. Apes 2. Endangered species. 3. Extinct animals. I. Title. Ql737.P96S733 2012 599.88—dc23 2012023985 Contents Prologue: Save the Apes! 1 ONE Heart of Darkness 8 TWO Homeless 37 THREE Bushmeat 73 FOUR outbreak 103 FIVE In a not- So- Gilded Cage 128 SIX The Double-E dged Sword of Ecotourism 159 SEVEN Ethnocide 191 Epilogue: May There Always Be Apes 222 notes 231 Further Reading 241 Acknowledgments 247 Index 252 PROLOGUE Save the Apes! There are seven billion people on Earth today. Meanwhile, the population of our next-o f- kin is plummeting to extinction. Af- ter millions of years of co- existence with humans, they have been nearly exterminated within a few de cades and seem des- tined to go the way of the American bison, the giant panda, and the tiger; reduced to such pathetically low numbers that they exist only in carefully managed, protected areas. As in other genocides, the world watches, wrings its hands, but does very little to stop it. The result of the slaughter will be that the great apes, our closest relatives on Earth, will be effectively gone. They will hardly be alone; there is a mass extinction afoot such as our planet has never seen. There have been at least five mass extinctions in Earth’s his tory. During each a sig nifi cant por- tion of the plants and animals disappeared. The biologist Stuart Pimm and his colleagues estimate the current extinction rate to 1 PLANET WITHOUT APES be between one hundred and one thousand times greater than the rate of species disappearance that has characterized the past half- billion years. In other words, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, and it has barely begun. Given that all animals are at risk from our rape of the Earth, why should we be so concerned about just four species—the chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo, and orangutan—among the many millions alive today? We should care because these four crea- tures are our lifeline. They are our last remaining links to our evolutionary past, and they tell us a great deal about who we are today. Allowing them to die would be like allowing our ex- tended family to die. But we are not allowing them to perish through benign neglect. Humans have carried out a campaign of extermination against the great apes that has reached epic proportions. It has pushed two of the ape species to the brink of extinction in the wild, with the remaining two not far behind. Great apes have the tragic misfortune to live only in the most impoverished regions of the Earth. Their tropical forest homes are surrounded by people living in abject poverty, for whom protecting a rare animal is inconsequential compared to feeding a family. The apes live long lives, maturing slowly and reproducing at a very slow pace, and so are unable to withstand the panoply of threats that now envelop them. Their forests are being cut down beneath them. Their meat is relished by people. They are subject to all the diseases that afflict humans and have suf fered massive epidemics from emerging viruses. They con- 2 SAVE THE APES! tinue to be taken from the wild to serve as labo ra tory animals, circus performers, and household pets. After millennia of co- existing with people, the great apes face an onslaught of trouble that has caused them to plummet toward extinction across their ranges in Africa and Asia. Why should we care? That is the question that conserva- tionists have tried to answer for the public for generations, whether the cause was Save the Whales, Save the Rain Forests, or save anything else. Perhaps the question we need to ask in this case is why we should care more about the great apes than we might care about the myriad other animals in need of our protection. After all, a gorilla is not as beautiful as a tiger, or as charismatic as a giant panda, or as im por tant to global eco- systems as honey bees. We care about the great apes first and foremost because they are us. They are largely the same ge- netic material of which we are made—our evolutionary closest kin. They are like humans in ways that blur the distinctions be- tween us. How intelligent is an ape? There is a chimpanzee in a lab in Japan who can remember numerical sequences better than you or I can. There are chimpanzees who talk to themselves, making signs with their fingers as they absent- mindedly leaf through a magazine or chat with each other. There is a bonobo who has learned to make a stone tool in much the same way our ancestors did, and who has come to treat the best tools he has made as valued creations. A chimpanzee in a zoo in Sweden 3
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