Chimpanzee News - Other Great Apes

A quarter of villagers living near orangutans in Indonesia's Kalimantan province are not aware the rare primates are protected and say orangutans have been killed in their village, said a new survey released on Wednesday. Only a handful of orangutans are left in the wild, mostly in forests on Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Kalimantan, where activists say logging and palm oil expansion have driven the primates close to extinction.

However, many living close to remaining orangutan communities do not know it is against Indonesian law to harm them, according to a survey of Kalimantan villagers conducted by the Indonesian Primates Association and The

Nature Conservancy.

Palm oil is a popular, cheap commodity, which green activists are doing their best to turn into a commercial liability. Companies are finding them impossible to ignore

Early on April 21st 2008, Greenpeace activists dressed as orang-utans stormed Unilever’s headquarters in London. Similar raids took place at the multinational’s facilities on Merseyside, in Rome and in Rotterdam. Furry protesters scaled buildings, occupied production lines and unfurled banners. Many read: “Unilever: Don’t Destroy the Forests”. Dove, one of the company’s best-known brands, was singled out by name.

When conservationist Damian Aspinall released a captive gorilla named Kwibi back into the jungles of West Africa five years ago, no one knew the two would one day be reunited.

But 5 years later, in a touching video that shows the ability of God's creatures to remember with love those that care for them long after us humans think they've forgotten, you have a moment like this.

iPhone app to help DR Congo mountain gorillas

17-05-2010 - BBC News

About 211 of the great apes are estimated to be living in the park

A mobile phone application has been launched to help protect the critically endangered mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The app, called iGorilla, allows users of iPhones and iPads to follow the lives of gorilla families in the remote forests of the Virunga National Park. Each app costs $4 (£3), with most of the money going to the park. The mountain gorilla population has been reduced by poaching, civil conflict, deforestation and disease. But conservation work is helping to secure the remaining 720 animals, with an estimated 211 of the great apes living in the park.

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Gorillas are being dangerously stressed by tourists whose attentions are disrupting the animals' feeding routines and making them aggressive. The discovery – made by researchers who have just completed a year-long study of the great apes at Bai Hokou in the Central African Republic – has important implications for the tourism industry.

Eco-tourism has become extremely popular, providing travellers with opportunities to get close to rare species, including tigers, polar bears and gorillas. Money raised in this way has helped to preserve endangered animals and bring employment to developing countries.

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All week I have been at the zoo in Singapore exploring the lives of the orangutans here.

I spent time with individual orangutans, feeding bits of small fruit into their soft, gentle mouths, sitting beside them and being ignored, letting Ahseng, the two-year-old son of Miri, touch me gingerly.

Miri tolerated my presence. She is not a moody and temperamental orangutan like the other mother, Anita. "She doesn't mind who you are," I was told. She saw that I was the friend of the keepers she knew and trusted. The other orangutans don't like Miri because her congenial temperament means that she spends more time with human beings and gets more rewards, like the mulberry leaves she loves.

The WCS has just launched a new program that promotes snail farming, which helps local people generate income, provides an alternative source of animal protein, and hopefully will eliminate illegal hunting of what is Africa’s rarest and most endangered great ape.

Eight former gorilla hunters were selected from four villages to participate in the new initiative. With help from the WCS, they've constructed snail pens, each of which was stocked with 230 African giant snails.  Because of the snail’s high protein content, coupled with low maintenance costs, quick results, and easy replication, snail farming is expected to catch on quickly.

Researchers in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo are joyful after receiving confirmation that a young male orangutan used a rope bridge to cross a river, which has separated one orangutan population from another. Due to logging and clearing forests for oil palm plantations, which cover 18 percent of land in Sabah, orangutans on the Kinabantangan River have been cut into fragmented populations.

"Over the years we have received numerous local eye witness reports of the orangutans using these rope bridges but this is the first time we have received photographic evidence which clearly shows a young male orangutan using the first rope bridge we constructed in 2003 to cross over Resang river, a small tributary of Kinabatangan," explains primatologist, Dr. Isabelle Lackman, Co-Director of the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project (KOCP) in a press statement.

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Gorillas could disappear from much of Africa's Congo River Basin within 15 years without urgent action to protect them, a United Nations and police report says.

"Illegal logging, mining, charcoal production and increased demand for bush meat, of which an increasing proportion is ape meat," are killing off gorillas, the largest of the living primates, the U.N. Environment Program and International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, report said.

Christian Nellemann, a U.N. Environment Program senior officer who led the report, said, "With the current and accelerated rate of poaching for bush meat and habitat loss, the gorillas of the Greater Congo Basin may now disappear from most of their present range within 10 to 15 years."

Orang-utans normally steer clear of water. In the wild they rarely go near rivers and lakes, to avoid the crocodiles and snakes that lurk there. So it came as a surprise to conservationists when a group of orphaned orang-utans that had been relocated to Kaja Island in Borneo started getting wet for all sorts of reasons: one pair was even seen having sex in water. "My guess is that the male chose the location because there was less chance of him being interrupted by other, more dominant males," says Anne Russon of York University in Toronto, Canada.

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Cajoling bored friends to keep playing with you is not limited to humans. A gorilla that wants to continue a game will also try to do this, and will even deliberately lose if necessary. This hints that gorillas may have "theory of mind" – the capacity to attribute mental states to others.

Richard Byrne and Joanne Tanner of St Andrews University in the UK videoed gorillas at San Francisco Zoo. As well as engaging with a toy and another gorilla, the animals seemed aware of how their playmate was interacting with the toy. "The gorillas could encourage their playmates when they were losing interest, or self-handicap if there was a danger of winning the game," says Byrne.

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Two baby primates orphaned in 2007 are safe now but grave challenges remain.

A baby gorilla claps her palms and leaps to the top of a wooden climbing frame. Another grips the hands of her keeper and swings head over heels with childlike exuberance. The pair play in long grass in the shade of bamboo, fig and wild banana trees. This is Ndeze and Ndakasi, symbols of hope in the struggle to save the imperilled mountain gorillas of eastern Africa.

The pair, orphaned in massacres that shocked the world in 2007, are settling into a new home and could soon be part of a new family. Negotiations are under way to bring two adult gorillas from Rwanda to become their adoptive parents, with a view to returning the babies to the wild.

Kristen Lukas, who chairs the Gorilla Species Survival Plan of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, has been involved in gorilla research since 1992. She also is curator of conservation and science at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  She answered questions concerning gorilla escapes from zoos.

Are gorillas more prone to escaping from confinement at the zoo than other animals?

Like the vegetarian who can't resist the occasional burger, the otherwise herbivorous gorilla might succumb to cravings for its evolutionary cousins, a new study hints. While some zoo specimens are known to eat meat, wild gorillas eat only plants and fruit, along with the odd insect—as far as scientists know. But a recent study found DNA from monkeys and small forest antelopes called duikers in the feces of wild African mountain gorillas in Loango National Park in Gabon. The discovery raises the possibility that gorillas might have a secret meat habit—scavenging or hunting discretely.

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A population of Sumatran orangutan has been found in Batan Toru forest in North Sumatra, but their number had not yet been determined. The population, found in areas located in South Tapanuli, North Tapanuli and Central Tapanuli, is believed to be the first found this year. Last year, an orangutan population was found in Dairi regency. Nasir Siregar, a resident of Sipirok in South Tapanuli, said he found four big orangutan nests in the forest. "Based on their location, it's unlikely the nests are made by animals other than orangutans," he said.

It is no secret that orangutans are threatened with extinction because their rain forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Ten years ago, Shawn Thompson, a writer, former journalist and university professor, set out to chronicle the threat to orangutans in a book released in March 2010. The book is called The Intimate Ape: Orangutans and the Secret Life of a Vanishing Species.

The book spends most of the time talking about the nature of orangutans and the relationships between orangutans and people. But the ultimate underlying message is there about the source of the peril to orangutans and the solution. Thompson says that the problem of saving orangutans has to do with communications and human nature.

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We shouldered our packs -- leaving behind us a small town of wooden shacks, and making our way up a steep climb into the Mbe mountains and Nigeria's last rainforest.

In this area there's no mobile phone network and only a few hours of electricity a month for the local community.

One of our guides waved towards the forest ahead of us: "We used to hear the gorillas roar from here in the town," reminisced Joseph Njama. "But not anymore."

We're searching for the world's rarest and most endangered gorilla -- the Cross River gorilla. In Nigeria and Cameroon there are thought to be only 300 left, and in these Mbe mountains maybe only 30 remain.

The challenge of saving the orangutan - man's closest relative - from extinction is trickling down to the weekly shop.

Many of the biscuits, margarines, breads, crisps and even bars of soap that consumers pick off supermarket shelves contain an ingredient that is feeding a growth industry that conservationists say is killing the orangutans. The mystery ingredient in the mix is palm oil - the cheapest source of vegetable oil available - and one that rarely appears on the label of most products. Palm oil is grown on land that was once home to the vast rainforests of Borneo, and the natural habitat of the orangutan.

Seemingly without a care in the world six-month-old lowland gorilla baby Yewande leans back with her arms behind her head. They are expertly balanced on a strip of cloth suspended between two wooden struts in her enclosure forming almost a hammock behind her head.

Yewande - from Calgary Zoo, Canada - decided to take some time out after spending a good half and hour playing with her favourite pink blanket. In another shot Yewande's huge silverback dad Kakinga dwarfs the youngster as he wanders over to check on his chilled-out offspring.  Yewande's exploits were caught on camera by zoo visitor Nancy Chow, 66, who was amazed by the pose struck by the baby primate.

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