Primatology.net

I don’t normally make out pleas to help out each and every conservation organization but my friend Allison, who worked for the following organization, told me about what’s happening to it and this one is really serious.

First some background, the conservation organization is speak of is the Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi, a wildlife refuge in Parque Machía, near Villa Tunari, Bolivia. They house many animals, such as capuchin, spider, and squirrel monkeys. Recently, Jane Goodall did a special for Animal Planet where she listed her 5 heroes and she chose the founder, Juan Carlos Antezana, as her final one in the show. They are a great organization and do much more than help save wildlife.

The bad news is that Inti Wara Yassi is in jeopardy and the animals need our help! Some of the land they use for facilities such as the veterinary clinic, monkey quarantine and small animals area will be sold off by the landlord if they don’t raise $30,000 USD within two weeks. Sounds like black mail to me… the loss of these facilities may mean the animals die. That’s a lot of monkeys that will lose their lives because of this petty situation.

Please help out Inti Wara Yassi! Some money has been donated but it ain’t $30k yet! Any little bit helps…You can donate money directly to the organization by visiting the site and you can also help spread the word and bring attention to this situation by digging up this on Digg.com. That way thousands more people will read about it and potentially help.

One of Time Magazine‘s “Hero’s for the Planet 2000“, known for discovering new species (Callicebus bernhardi, Callicebus stephennashi, etc.) and focusing his attentions on protecting the rainforest has been convicted of failing to apply for a permit on behalf of the monkey refuge in his Brazilian home. It seems that without the permit (or license) Brazil sees the orphaned monkeys as stolen.

Dutch Biologist Marc van Roosmalen reported that he had previously filed for permits (1996, 1998, 2000) but received no reply from Ibama (the environmental protection agency). Apparently it is generally accepted that if you don’t receive word after 45 days, the application has been accepted. While officials have acknowledged that van Roosmalen did apply, they deny that the 45-day rule is “not explicit in the legislation.”

I first learned of this from Primate-Science listserv yesterday where the post began with a statement of shock before requesting suggestions on how everyone could help… feel free to post your own thoughts which I will gladly pass along.

(photo courtesy of the Apenheul Foundation via Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

One of our more popular posts of all time has been the photos of the tiger and orangutan friendships I shared with you several months back.

To rekindle that interest, I’ve come accross a Reuters news piece on a similar friendship… but this time it is between squirrel monkeys and giant South American rodents called capybaras. And it is all taking place in a Japanese Zoo, Tobu Zoo.

An interesting cultural sidenote, I was reading about capybaras last night and how in countries like Venezula and Brazil, the capybara is to Easter as turkeys are to the United States’ Thanksgiving. That’s because Catholics consider capybaras a fish, mind you, because they live in water and thus are not considered meat for Lent. Crazy, I know.

But I digress, the photo to our right is of one such compainionship between the two species. The news blip on this gets way too technical, hypothesizing whether this is a unique frienship or it can happen in the wild and injectures of meekness, etc. While both species inhabit South America,

“their paths do not cross — capybaras live on river banks while the monkeys live in forests.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Julia Hoy, from University of Queenlands’s School of Animal Studies, has been organizing a conference for the 25th annual meeting of the Australasian Primate Society this March. It will be starting next week on Friday March 9th and going on to the 11th.

Before I jump into the details of the conference, I passed the University of Queenland’s press release about this to Betsy today and she mentioned she has meet Julia at another conference two years ago! What a small world primatology operates in, no? Maybe some of other readers have met Julia before. If you need a photo to refresh your memory, here’s one of her and some squirrel monkeys:

Anyways back to the interesting stuff. Julia has managed to get Jon Coe, a ‘renowned international zoo designer,’ as one of the keynote speaker. He will be discussing a very creative and proactive form of animal care where,

“primate facilities [will give] animals more choice, independence and creativity through individualized care.”

What he means by this is effectively giving primates the freedom to manage their own lives, as they do in the wild. This is an intriguing concept, one that I side with completely. In this manner, humans are not imposing complete constraints of captivity upon the animals.

I also believe this concept is an interesting progression in the changes we have been seeing in zoos. Zoos have been breaking down their cages and creating habitats that better match the natural ecosystems the wild counterparts live in. With this step they also break down the psychological ‘cages’ upon which a human caregiver/zoo keeper exhibits a form of dominance over the animal. Jon sees it similarly. He,

“believe[s] this will lead to more confident, self-assured and motivated animals, which will not only reduce stress and improve animal well-being, but will create more active, interesting and informative displays.”

If you wanna see Jon Coe speak and you’re in Queenland, Jon’s free public lecture on Friday, March 9 from 6.30pm-7.30pm in the Lecture Theatre S304, Social Sciences Building (no. 24) at UQ St Lucia. And yet that’s just one of the topics that will be discussed. Other conference topics included animal health to self-recognition, diet, behavior and reasoning. Some of the other speakers will be:

• UQ psychology researchers Professor Thomas Suddendorf, Dr Emma Collier-Baker, Dr Mark Nielsen and PhD student Andrew Hill
• UQ School of Animal Studies students Amanda Fernie, Kris Descovich and Sunny Sanderson from UQ’s School of Integrative Biology.

For more conference information visit: http://www.primates.on.net/apsconf.htm