An orphanage for primates
Claudine André runs a nursery for bonobos in the Congo and warns about the vanishing presence of the most humanlike of the apes. Part 1 of two.
from the May 9, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
The nursery may be the most important part. Baby bonobos will not survive if they don't bond with a mother figure. At first, André was the surrogate mom for most of the orphans. Now staff members fill this role. Henriette Lubondo plays full-time nanny to Sake, a new arrival. She wakes up the bonobo at 8 a.m. and gives her a bottle. She sings to her during the day and puts her to bed at 4 p.m. "Some of the babies nap," Ms. Lubondo says as Sake climbs into André's lap. "Not this one. She's very active."
Many conservation groups, such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the World Society for the Protection of Animals, support André's work. "Claudine and the sanctuary play an important role in awareness-raising both locally and internationally," says Michael Hurley of the Bonobo Conservation Initiative. "It's next to impossible and outrageously expensive to see bonobos in the field. So the opportunity to drop into the sanctuary in Kinshasa is extremely good." Still, many say the real need is to keep bonobos from being poached in the first place.
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In the 1970s, conservation groups estimate, about 200,000 bonobos lived in the wild. Today, figures put the natural population from 10,000 to 25,000. Conservationists say the pressure on bonobos is increasing, even though there is no wide-scale fighting in the DRC today.
One reason is that without the constant warring, it's easier for timber interests to log the forests that form the bonobos' habitat. But even more threatening is the huge increase in the bush-meat trade. Across the DRC, sanctuaries and police are in far shorter supply than guns and bullets. And many former soldiers, still armed, are looking for ways to make a living. Years of war and dislocation have undermined traditional taboos against killing and eating bonobos.
André hopes that education will change this. Already, she sees some improvement in Kinshasa. Many schoolchildren who visit Lola Ya call to report illegal bonobo sales in their neighborhoods. Even some poachers will turn in babies after community members chide them.
Now the challenge is to figure out what to do when there are too many rescued bonobos for Lola Ya to handle. André is working on a plan to reintroduce some to the wild, but she'd prefer – if she had the money – to set up more sanctuaries.
She sighs. "We have gone from one crisis to another," she says. A bonobo baby slides down the hallway, and she smiles again. "[But] I think the happiness here is far more than the sorrow."
• Next: teaching bonobos language in Iowa.
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