Taiping Four gorillas to go on show in South Africa

[Guest guest]

If any groups on this list will be going to the IUCN Congress in Bangkok in

November, note that Valli Moosa of South Africa is running for President of

IUCN. If your group is an IUCN member but will not be represented, please

contact me (smcgreal) re voting proxies. We support Moosa's rival,

Parvez Hassan of Pakistan. Shirley

 

Gorillas in the midst - Trade in endangered species

 

6 November 2004

The Economist

 

© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London 2004. All rights reserved

 

The illegal trade in gorillas

 

A tug-of-war for the Taiping Four

 

IF ANYONE doubts the economic value of endangered animals, consider the saga

of the Taiping Four. These juvenile western lowland gorillas were poached

three years ago, probably in Cameroon. They were smuggled first to Nigeria,

and then traded for a reported $1m to a zoo in Taiping, Malaysia. When this

illegal deal was exposed last year, Malaysia's authorities chose to send the

animals to the Pretoria zoo in South Africa, and a 4m rand ($650,000)

state-of-the-art special enclosure is due to open for them next month.

 

The Taiping Four are sure to draw big crowds: the Pretoria zoo expects 6m

visitors in the next decade. Its director, Willie Labuschagne, talks of a

breeding programme, and of educating visitors about the impact of hunting

wild apes for bush-meat. He also hopes to promote awareness of the

international convention on trade in endangered species, known as CITES. His

project, in short, is a conservation effort to keep the species alive, if

only in captivity.

 

None of that pleases animal activists and conservationists, especially in

West Africa. Groups such as the International Primate Protection League

prodded the governments of Cameroon and Nigeria this year to demand that the

four apes be sent to a sanctuary in Limbe, Cameroon. There, a dozen rescued

gorillas are already kept in good conditions. The conservation groups point

out that CITES strongly encourages (though it does not compel) the return of

illegally traded animals to their country of origin.

 

Limbe's managers say that failure to do so will encourage more illegal

trading. They accuse Mr Labuschagne of lobbying the Malaysian authorities

for the gorillas, knowing they guarantee crowds for any zoo. Mr Labuschagne

says publicity-seeking activists are pursuing a " personal agenda " against

him. Limbe is merely an ape " orphanage " , he points out. With no breeding

programme (Limbe's gorillas are given contraceptive pills), nor project to

return its animals to the wild, it is a holding centre for gorillas until

they die.

 

This is a nasty spat. But does it matter beyond the fate of the unlucky

Taiping Four? Activists think so. Failure to send such high-profile and

high-value animals back to their country of origin " shows there is no teeth

in CITES " , says Elizabeth Gadsby of the Pandrillus Foundation, a

gorilla-conservation group in Nigeria and Cameroon. If zoos benefit, even

indirectly, from illegal trading, then the market for primate poachers is

preserved. Some Nigerian zoos are suspected of being centres for an illegal

trade in chimpanzees, for example. More species could be hurried to

extinction if trade in wild animals expands.

 

Perhaps. The immediate plight of the Taiping Four probably means little

either way for the future of Africa's troubled lowland gorillas. It is

nearly impossible to release captive animals like these back into the wild

and have them survive. And breeding programmes rarely work. It would be more

effective to spend money on protecting the few remote parts of West Africa

where other western lowland gorillas survive. But that work, carried out far

from the enthralled gaze of a King Kong-loving public, is unglamorous - and

much less fun for activists and zoo-keepers alike. And where is the value in

that?