December 9, 2004
KITH AND KIN COME FIRST
Pygmy chimp a victim of war (AP, Globe and Mail, December 9th, 2004)
One of man's closest relatives, the pygmy chimpanzee, may be much closer to extinction than previously thought, a conservation group said Thursday.A study by the Worldwide Fund for Nature found that poaching and human encroachment into the animal's natural habitat had left far fewer pygmy chimpanzees — or bonobos — in Congo's Salonga National Park than previously thought.
“These initial results concern us greatly,” said Peter Stephenson, the great apes expert for the group, which is known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States. “If things are this bad here, we can assume that across the Congo, bonobos are in crisis.”[...]
Previously, up to 50,000 pygmy chimpanzees were thought to be living in the wild. The World Wildlife Fund hopes to revise the estimate early next year after analyzing the study's results.
Neighbouring Rwanda twice invaded Congo, in 1996 and 1998, to hunt down Rwandan Hutu combatants responsible for the 1994 genocide of more than a half-million minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The second invasion triggered a war that involved at least four other African nations and killed an estimated 3.2 million people in eastern Congo, territory under Rwanda's wartime control.
There are many, many people in the West who are more disturbed and emotionally engaged by the loss of thousands of bonobos than millions of humans. Perhaps that is because they have come to believe the bonobos are close relatives and the humans complete strangers.
The average bonobo has better table manners, better etiquette, better hygiene, is less inclined to violence and is a far better and wittier conversationalist than the general run of humanity.
Posted by: Bart at December 9, 2004 6:17 AMBart:
And they don't smoke either. Look, we're all delighted you finally found a group of like-minded good friends, but be careful, man. They are notoriously faithless and will break your heart every time.
Posted by: Peter B at December 9, 2004 7:15 AMMaybe if G.W. Bush saves the chimp -- instead of regular, boring human Africans -- he will finally get the respect he deserves.
Posted by: Randall Voth at December 9, 2004 8:08 AMI think it's because the bonobos will be gone completely, and there will still be plenty of humans.
Posted by: Brandon at December 9, 2004 8:57 AMPeter,
Bonobos aren't cats. They aren't as special as short Welsh herding dogs but they have their uses. They react very badly to capitivity once they reach adulthood, which is to their credit.
The world would be an infinitely better place if we had a massive epidemic(not a sadly bogus and lame one like AIDS), where one's chances of survival were directly proportional to his attention to personal hygiene.
Posted by: Bart at December 9, 2004 11:52 AMBart: Now you're joining the anti-France bandwagon?
Posted by: David Cohen at December 9, 2004 3:07 PMThey'll leave behind the cookbooks, the museums and the vineyards.
The stereotype has its basis in fact though. I have a very close friend who is a French aristocrat, a professor of American Literature at the Universite' de Toulouse who can spend 45 minutes in the bathroom in the morning ostensibly cleaning up, without running the water even once. I haven't the foggiest idea what he's doing in there.
Another time I was trapped on a 2d class railway car with an older Frenchman who got on the train in Valence, and who smelled like a rotting corpse.
Posted by: Bart at December 9, 2004 4:44 PM