Tag Archives: conservation

Cygnets and Swan Necks – a Case of Lead Poisoning?

Cygnets on 10th May, about a week old

Meet the new arrivals.  At a pool close to where I live in the south of England, I’ve been following the progress of these cygnets since their birth five weeks ago; the  picture and the video were taken about a week after hatching.

The same breeding pair has built a nest in the same spot for the last four years: sometimes they get lucky – othertimes it looks like they go through the motions – or maybe the youngsters get dispatched by predators  before I see them.

And for sure, it’s not all sweetness and light.  Since I shot the video, one of the cygnets has developed a problem with its neck.

Swans , and particularly cygnets in their first year, are vulnerable to a host of threats: from natural predators like herons, crows, magpies and foxes;

to a bunch of man-made hazards including:  being shot at, getting caught up with fishing tackle, lead poisoning, being attacked by pet dogs, crashing into electricity pylons, and getting run down by cars.   Even well-meaning but misguided feeding can be injurious – mouldy bread is poisonous to swans.

When I visited the brood on 30th May, when the cygnets were about three weeks old, I noticed one of their number struggling to keep its head up.  That might be caused by an injury, but it’s also a known symptom of lead poisoning.

Cygnets on 30th May, one is having trouble holding its head up
Lead fishing sinker weights are banned in the UK

As Doreen Graham of the Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals said in this 2007 BBC report : “Lead poisoning is quite easy to identify in a swan because they cannot lift their heads and their heads are resting on their backs”.  There was a particularly bad spate of lead poisoning during the 1960s, although since then, with a ban on lead fishing weights, or sinkers, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) believes the problem has diminished.

Lead shotgun pellets are the other likely culprit.  There are bans or restrictions on the use of lead shot throughout the UK, with detail variations across the devolved constituencies; but there’s always the danger of legacy poisoning from old pellets lying in the reeds or on the pool bed.

All swans rest their heads and necks at times – it’s how they rest and sleep; but this one’s doing it most of the time, standing out from the group:

The other cygnets appear to sense the difference,  taking the occasional peck at their handicapped sibling:

While the parents appear indifferent:

Fast forward to 8th June, when the cygnets are a month old, and at first sight there’s an improvement: it’s all heads-up in this convoy.  But on closer inspection, number 4 from the left isn’t quite right:

Cygnets on 8th June

and in this pre-roost preening session, there’s clearly still a problem:

As twilight deepens, the female swan, or pen, climbs into the nest, followed by the cygnets:

It’s easy to make up stories, but here a parent appears to attend the neck of one of the cygnets (I can’t confirm it’s ‘the’ cygnet):

And they settle for the night:

For now, the afflicted cygnet appears to be growing at a normal rate and, despite some earlier sniping by siblings, appears to be accepted by the group.   I’ll be keeping an eye on this family  over the coming weeks and update the blog with any developments.

 

 UPDATE 8 July

Happy ending.  Here’s the whole crew on 19th June – 11 days after the pics above.   All six cygnets holding their heads up high.  I’ve only just got round to updating, but if they’ve got this far they’re probably going to make the distance.  Whatever was wrong with the afflicted cygnet seems to have worked itself through/out.  (Not that these guys aren’t still in a warzone.)

 

SEE ALSO:

Lead gunshot ‘poisoning UK birds’ (BBC News October 2012)

 

Sources

1. The Swan Sanctuary

2.RSPB – Mute Swans

3. North West Swan Study (northwestswanstudy.org.uk)

4. The Threats to Wildlife from Pollution (Conservation Issues UK)

Science and Art at the Getty

It’s turning into quite an artsy fortnight.  On Thursday, I went to see Getty CEO Jim Wood interviewed at Caltech, then a visit with dinner at the Getty Center itself on Saturday night, before on Monday taking my chances with the holiday crowds at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).  Between times I’ve been viewing some wonderful examples of Arts & Crafts era houses in Pasadena, and learning about the origins of Californian en plein air outdoor painting.  A few notes on the Caltech event…..

Getty Museum
The Getty Center, Los Angeles (Photo:Tim Jones)

‘Science and Art’ featured J.Paul Getty Trust President and CEO Jim Wood talking with broadcaster Madeleine Brand.

Despite the wide-open title, the conversation focused on the Getty’s expertise in artifact conservation, and an upcoming series of region-wide exhibitions intended to show how post-WWII Californian art was influenced by the science and technology of the period.

Wood began by describing the full extent of the Getty’s capabilities beyond the public face of the Museum, and how its scientists have developed conservation techniques that are deployed on  conservation projects around the world. These range from the restoration of flood-damaged panels in Florence to the recovery of poorly preserved mosaics in Damascus.

The upcoming exhibition series will feature artists from Los Angeles, and cover the 1945-1980 period of rapid industrial development and space exploration.   Californian artists in particular stayed close to technological developments at this time, and incorporated emerging new materials and techniques into their art.  The period is coincident with the Cold War, so it will be interesting to watch for any cultural references in that direction (I’m thinking of the type of arts exhibits from the USA featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Cold War Modern exhibition last year).

The Q&A kicked off refreshingly backwards with Jim Wood suggesting it’s important to understand the differences between art and science.  He takes the view that science deals with progress – it moves towards a goal; but art – while evolving, doesn’t do that; it’s less about facts than ideas.  All in all though, despite Wood’s best efforts, these forays into more philosophical territory didn’t really get picked up on by the interviewer or the audience; something of a missed opportunity I felt.

Getty Center Restaurant
Getty Center Restaurant (Photo:Tim Jones)

There was an interesting question to Wood on the role of art as a tool to explain difficult scientific concepts; had such art been produced, and should it be preserved?  Making a distinction between illustrative and creative art, Wood suggested scientifically illustrative works were likely to be valued; but more for their documentary than artistic qualities.  For me, the role of illustrative art is undeniable – look at the depictions of cosmological concepts in popular physics books.  The role for creative art in science communication is more ambiguous.  It can tell us about prevailing cultural attitudes towards science and technology – back to the Cold War again, consider those swirling atoms and mushroom cloud depictions of atomic power.   But it’s less obvious – to me at least – how an abstract artistic aesthetic might translate into, or inform, science.

Getty Center
Getty Center (Photo:Tim Jones)

Wood was asked how we decide when it is right to return an artifact fully to it’s original state – as the conservator’s toolkit gets ever more impressive?  It seems there are some difficult calls, but it’s more usual to conserve than restore.

That brought to mind a whole area of science-art interaction that the evening hadn’t touched upon: the use of technology for artifact simulation and display, whereby an original piece is presented next to a simulation of how the item would have originally appeared.  I’m thinking here of Roman and Greek statues in their original livery, the brightly painted interiors of Catholic cathedrals, and projection techniques that bring faded tapestries – however temporarily – back to life.  I digress; but for more on the topic, here’s a nice piece on statuary,  ‘Gods in Color’, from the Boston Globe.

Anyway, that was a very brief update on my brush with science and art at Caltech and the Getty.

Incidentally, one important feature of the Getty Center that Wood didn’t mention is its restaurant, commendable as much for its location as the food. Perched high overlooking the Los Angeles  basin towards the ocean, the views are an inspiration to artist and scientist alike.

The Business of Conservation

Conservation, business, and the Olive Ridley Turtle.  This article was originally published at ConservationToday.Org

olive-ridley-turtle
Olive Ridley Turtle (c) itsnature.org

It’s almost exactly a year since I left my job as director for procurement strategy and development at Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel business owned by India’sTata Steel Group.  I  have happy memories of meeting Indian colleagues in Kolkota and visiting Tata’s operations at Jamshedpur.  So it’s been especially disappointing to watch over the year a progressive sickening of relations between Tata Steel, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Greenpeace, over the issue of the Olive Ridley Turtle.

Briefly, the case concerns the potential impact on the turtles beaching behaviour of the construction, by a Tata JV company, of a deep water port at Dhamra, on India’s Bengal coast. The case is complex and unresolved to the satisfaction of all parties, particularly Greenpeace, who have criticised the nature of the IUCN’s engagement with Tata. I don’t plan to dissect the case here; starting points for that can be found at these sites: IUCN press release (2008)Dhamra Port Company StatementGreenpeace.

Rather, the case prompts reflection on  the broader relationship between business and the environment – including conservation.  My message is that a business-like and emotion-free relationship is requisite, and that negative criticisms (founded or not) of individual involvements by organisations like the IUCN should not distract from the essential wisdom of their philosophy for business engagement.

As Mohammed Valli Moosa, President of the IUCN has said:

We  are living in an era of global economic expansion.  The private sector is a major player in this period of unprecedented development.  Business has a responsibility to the global environment.  Business has to do more than just avoid prosecution.”

(source: Partnerships for the Planet)

Moosa here is not showing anti-business sentiment; indeed, he questions the way the conservation movement has traditionally engaged with business, as in this report by the New York Times on the occasion of the 2008 World Conservation Congress.

Part of the IUCN’s role is to provide a forum where traditionally divergent views and stakeholders can find solutions that don’t reject the market, but work with it, and has established the Business and Biodiversity Programme (BBP) to support its goals.

The IUCN helps businesses like Shell, Holcim, and Tata to formulate best practice standards and improved conservation policies.  The approach is consciously ‘pragmatic’ (IUCN’s term).  Dialogue does not mean an absence of criticism; the IUCN have challenged Shell on an energy  strategy that focuses on biofuels over wind and solar (link to report here).   On the Dhamra project, the IUCN have in an agreement with Tata advised on the possible impact and mitigation of environmental concerns, although not to the satisfaction, particularly, of Greenpeace.  References in the various chat forums around the case allude to ‘greenwashing’ and abandonment of the ‘precautionary principle’ – implying some kind of sell-out to big business.

Engagement with business and business management principles is far from a sell-out.  By attaching an economic value to the social cost of environmental impact, Nicolas Stern’s report on climate change caught the attention of the political and business world like never before.  Businesses are coming to realise energy efficiencies and GHG emissions reduction can be achieved profitably through technology and improved corporate housekeeping.  The motivation for these actions is becoming less a response to protest and more a simple case of delivering to shareholder approved corporate plans; manifest not only in the glossy pages of corporate social responsibility or environmental reports, but embedded in the financial plans owned by company CFOs.  It is in the conservationists interest as well that businesses make this mind-set internally sustainable, and should be encouraging businesses to include environmental expertise on their boards – maybe in a non-executive director capacity.   Governments have a critical role in removing obfuscating sudsidies and making transparent the true costs of commodities and supply chains to businesses and private individuals.

Tension between business and conservationist goals will not reduce further until a true costing of impacts is agreed and worked to.  As that develops, we must guard against the equation being muddied by subjective judgements and emotion.  In the meantime, a degree of compromise is requisite on both sides, and a recognition that more can be achieved as a team, even one working under constructive tension.

‘The Open Ground’ – Conservation Event in London

Some of you may know that in addition to Zoonomian, I’m a contributing editor at ConservationToday.org, the conservation group run by post-graduate students from Imperial College under the leadership of Will Pearse.

Open Ground - come along on 20th June
Open Ground – come along on 20th June

It’s therefore a great pleasure to introduce this first one day conference organised by ConservationToday, and encourage you to go along.

The Open Ground conference will explore the common ground between the wider arts and sciences in conservation – taking place on the 20th of June in London.

Featuring:

John Fa – Director of conservation science at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

Armand Leroi – Professor at Imperial College London and BBC presenter of ‘Darwin’s Lost Voyage’

Sam Turvey – involved with the Yangtze River Dolphin, ZSL

Ruth Padel – former Professor of Poetry at Oxford and prize-winning author of ‘Darwin: a life in poems’

…and many more!

UPDATE Feb 2010

The audio of proceedings is here.

Back Pocket Big Picture

(This article originally appeared at conservationtoday.org)

Over Christmas, according to the Carbon Neutral Company’s online calculator, my wife and I were responsible for the release of 4.2 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere – our share of a 19000km round trip flight from London to Los Angeles.   With two such flights a year, that makes our individual emission 4.2 tonnes, or nearly half the UK per person annual average of  9.51 tonnes.

conserve

To reel off excuses for this travel (my better half hails from the US, and we like to see the in-laws in the flesh occasionally) is to miss the point, which is that I, and many more like me, at least now have some awareness and quantification of the impact we’re making; our consciousness has been raised.

We’re all part of the problem, each with our own circumstances,  and each needing a plan to address our impact.   My plan might involve paying the Carbon Neutral Company’s recommended carbon off-set fee of £35.70 in support of a Chinese hydro-electric project.  It won’t on this occasion, because while I support off-setting as one tool in the bag of control measures,  I’ve chosen instead to donate to projects benefiting animals already affected by the complex interplay of climate factors – which I’m about to come on to.

Starting the year with a  knowledge of your personal carbon footprint is only part of the story.  While sufficient perhaps for the average citizen to act upon and make a difference, policy makers, industry leaders, NGOs, conservationists, educators, and the plethora of other stakeholders and interest groups directly involved in climate change issues, need the bigger picture.

This is the bigger picture I’ll be working to in 2009, and it comes from the UK Government’s former Chief Scientific Advisor – Sir David King.   It’s been in my head, sparking ideas and resonating with a whole range of experience since I scribbled it on the back of a business card back in November.   I saw Sir David at an environmental media awards evening organised by PAWS, where he used the diagram to illustrate the important challenges of the 21st Century, and their inter-dependency.

Examples of specific  inter-dependencies are well represented in Conservation Today articles: from unpredictable climate induced pathogen interactions impacting biodiversity, to corporate actions influencing food production, to how health and education are changing the global population dynamic.   King’s representation is helpful in encapsulating the whole smash; its something you can carry around in your mental back pocket.   Away from specifics,  it also for me informs at least three more oblique, but no less important, themes that I’ll now expand upon:

  • The importance of  not generalising
  • The imperative for interdisciplinary and international cooperation
  • An opportunity for business and an alternative to rampant consumerism?

Don’t Generalise

I’ll illustrate how generalisations are dangerous with reference to two processes: desalination and GM crop growing.

Desalination is a process that has been criticised for its energy intensity and associated CO2 footprint.  King referred to the Australian province of Victoria’s response to seven years of drought conditions, whereby a third of its water will in future come from new desalination capacity.  Ultimately powered by Australia’s plentiful coal reserves, the plants will indirectly yield CO2, which will warm the planet, which will intensify the drought, which will demand more desalination plants.   It’s a simplified picture – but you get the point; in this case technology is a short term fix to a  grim spiral.

I’ve since though found a more positive example of ‘Green Desalination’ in the form of California’s Carlsbad Project.  Here, a 50 million gallon per day desalination plant is being built to supply up to 8% of San Diego County’s water needs, involving co-location of the plant with a new power station at the coast.   The encouraging  part is that when completed in 2011, it promises to be the first US plant to have a net zero carbon footprint.

So why can the Americans do it but not the Australians?    First off – don’t generalise – every situation is different; processes and power stations are not inherently evil.  San Diego County currently imports 90 percent of its water from a distance of more than 800km, from Sacramento Bay Delta and Colorado River, and the electricity needed to deliver and treat that water is close to what the new plant will use.   The mitigation of the remaining ‘CO2 gap’ will be achieved at the site through initiatives like green building design; on-site solar power generation; funding renewables; and acquisition of renewable energy credits.  Further carbon dioxide will be sequestrated by creation of coastal wetlands and reforestation (we know how important those are, see here) – and that will impact biodiversity.  See how our diagram is working here?

We also generalise when we impose the luxury of our western standards on to less wealthy societies.  Increased desertification and flooding in some Asian regions is combining with a healthier, more educated, and therefore at least temporarily increasing, population, to demand that rice farming become more intensive.  This means farming on land that may flood, requiring flood resistant rice strains – which are readily available as GM seeds.  In practice though, farmers wishing to export product beyond their own needs refrain from using GM rice because of the negative attitude it attracts in the west.  As a result, such farms may fail to meet even local food needs.  Given my personal stance on GM crops, that amounts to a case of  “one man’s lifestyle choice is another man’s starvation”.

The imperative for interdisciplinary and international cooperation

Inter-relating challenges demand an increased coordination of the political, infrastructure, research, and educational aspects associated with each.   Global warming is possibly the defining example of a need for innovatory thinking combined with an imperative for pan-disciplinary co-operation; not only across the sciences, but involving engineering, medicine, commercial, and policy elements.   The slow progress made at recent climate summits suggests the required international policy infrastructure just does not exist.  So where are the rays of hope?   The world has high hopes of Obama, and his promised global energy forum could be part of a more mature future; remember this:

“In addition I will create a Global Energy Forum—based on the G8+5, which includes all G-8 members plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa—comprising the largest energy consuming nations from both the developed and developing world. This forum would focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues. I will also create a Technology Transfer Program dedicated to exporting climate-friendly technologies, including green buildings, clean coal and advanced automobiles, to developing countries to help them combat climate change”

And closer to home, encouraging exemplar organisations have emerged, such as the  University College London’s Environment Institute, who are developing a pan-disciplinary approach to global warming; and King’s own organisation, the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, which aims to help governments, companies, and individuals meet future environmental challenges in the context of the bigger picture.

An opportunity for business and an alternative to rampant consumption

I could easily have overprinted the big picture interactions diagram with a giant $ sign, given that all our challenges are inescapably embedded in an economic and political web of capitalist growth imperative, feeding on consumption and wealth generation.     Question is – has that web, via the present financial crisis and to a background of increased environmental awareness, had a wake up call in any positive sense?

I’m going to stick my neck out and take an upbeat, even optimistic, tack on how business and the capitalist monster can become our greatest assest in tackling the century’s environmental challenges.   How come?   Because I believe there will be a significant shift of attitudes in (a) business awareness of the opportunities from environment related projects (like the Carlsbad desalination scheme), (b) increased government investment in such projects, both as a way of countering recession and addressing the underlying environmental need, (c) a less predictable re-think on the part of private individuals about the role of consumption – particularly excessive consumption in the west –  on their well-being.   I’m most optimistic about (a) and (b), precisely because the required technologies and management practices are at present so underdeveloped.   I’m less sure about the form of, or optimistic about how we might achieve, the revised international infrastructure needed to moderate individual nation’s interests.


Zoonomian Podcast – Interview with Alan Mootnick, Director Gibbon Conservation Center, Santa Clarita, California

Alan Mootnick

(Update 4th November 2011.  We were very sorry to hear of Alan’s death earlier today.  A fantastic guy and unmatched friend of gibbons.  Rest in peace Alan.)

What better way to spend Christmas than in the company of your favourite gibbons?   That’s exactly what my wife Erin and I did on the 26th December 2008, on our second visit to the Gibbon Conservation Center at Santa Clarita, California – home to some of the world’s rarest gibbons.

As well as catching up with gibbon families first met in September and described in this earlier post, I recorded the gibbons singing, and an extended interview with the Founder and Director of the Center, Alan Mootnick.

Much of what Alan has to say about working in gibbon conservation with various institutes, authorities, and peoples around the world, and particularly in Asia, is also relevant to other species.

Pileated gibbon, young female Dec. 2008

Each recording lasts between 3 and 10 minutes, with the entire interview as one edit included at the end.

gibbon center foot wash

 

Part 1 – Arrival

An early morning tour ends in a noisy chorus.

Alan Mootnick speaking at a fundraising event

 

Part 2 – Introduction

Alan introduces the aims of the Center, the various gibbon genera and species, and gives a disturbing account of the threats facing wild gibbons.

gibbon at santa clarita gibbon center

 

Part 3 – Breeding Program

Alan describes the breeding program for the Javan gibbon – of which only 4000 remain in the wild, the Center’s collaboration with zoos – including in the UK, and the challenges of finding gibbons for study in the wild.

 

Part 4 – Taxonomy

Gibbon genomics, taxonomy, and a showcase of mistaken identity.  The challenges of moving gibbons and their DNA around the world, and the role  of faeces in working out bloodlines.

Part 5 – Behaviour

Including apparent similarities with man, and discussion around gibbon song and brachiation (swinging arm to arm).  The highlight is Alan’s empirically supported theory of hostile genital or anal presenting – ‘gibbon mooning’ in other words.

Part 6 – Volunteer Program

Including the possibility of joining the Center from the UK.

Part 7 – Threats

Discusses issues around land management and deforestation in Indonesia, the illegal trade in gibbons, and the impact that’s having on the gibbon population.  Also some tips on how to work to best effect when dealing with zoos in Asia.

And this is the entire interview as a single edit:

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60Mb. Approx. 1 hour. Copyright, all rights reserved, 2009, Tim Jones  communicatescience.com

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If you enjoyed hearing about – and hearing ! – the gibbons of Santa Clarita, and would like to make a donation, you can do so here.

Interview With Alan Mootnick – Director, Gibbon Conservation Center, Santa Clarita

(Update 4th November 2011.  We were very sorry to hear of Alan’s death earlier today.  A fantastic guy and unmatched friend of gibbons.  Rest in peace Alan.)

What better way to spend Christmas than in the company of your favourite gibbons?   That’s exactly what my wife Erin and I did on the 26th December 2008, when we made our second visit to the Gibbon Conservation Center at Santa Clarita, California – home to some of the world’s rarest gibbons.

As well as catching up with gibbon families we first encountered in September, and described in this earlier post,  I made some sound recordings during this visit, including an extended interview with the Founder and Director of the Center, Alan Mootnick.

I hope you’ll  find the resulting podcast, which you can stream or download below, gives an in-depth, candid, yet often humorous insight  into the mission of the Gibbon Center, the plight of the gibbon, and the work of a dedicated scientist and hands-on conservationist.

(Please note, a later edit with the interview split down into six shorter sections can be found here)

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60Mb. Approx. 1 hour. Copyright, all rights reserved, 2009, Tim Jones  communicatescience.com

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Alan Mootnick, Director Gibbon Conservation Center
Alan Mootnick, Director Gibbon Conservation Center

If you enjoyed hearing about – and hearing ! – the gibbons of Santa Clarita, and would like to make a donation, you can do so here.

Say Hi To Kartika

Just a short note to introduce our latest adoption and to say thank you to S & J for the early Christmas present.

Kartika is a female Sulawesi Black Macaque from Indonesia, presently in the care of the Durrell Conservation Trust in Jersey.

kartika
kartika

Macaques are a ‘cheek-pouched’ monkey in the same group as baboons, guenons and vervet monkeys; but are sometimes confused with apes because their tails are so small.

Only found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the endangered black crested macaque lives in tropical forest and is a mixed ground and tree dweller.

Animal ‘adoptions’ are nice to receive and even nicer to give. They are also a good way of alerting friends and family to conservation issues.

Kartika joins two sea-turtles from the Mexican Baja California peninsula, and a lemur – so we are really quite diversified!

Sarah Palin? – Well, Apparently……..

Originally, I wanted to draw attention here to Sarah Palin’s environmental credentials, lest the topic be short-changed amidst the lively discussion of her religious beliefs. This article by Britt Collins in the Guardian was the spur; liberally illustrated with quotes from Palin and others, it includes this passage – reproduced verbatim in Collins’ contextual frame with the quote attributed to Palin bolded:

She then wrote a piece for the New York Times, saying that these “magnificent cuddly white bears are doing just fine and don’t need our protection. If the ice melts, they’ll adapt to living on land”. That is a contention most scientists found reckless, given that polar bears have shown little ability to feed on land.

Endangered

But here I came unstuck, the issue being I can’t find the quote in the cited reference (New York Times). I found this article by Palin, titled ‘Bearing Up’, and covering the right topic – but the quote’s not there. Maybe it turns up eventually, but it’s an emotive quotation, not to be spread lightly, even on a blog with Zoonomian’s embryonic circulation. So while I’m not a Palin fan, and find her potential career progression deeply worrying, that’s not the point here.

It turns out the quote has itself been quoted on several blogs concerned with climate change, conservation, or just anti-Palin; sometimes there’s a reference to the Guardian – sometimes not; but all dated after the Guardian posting.

I guess the issue is how comfortable we are in relaying information which can’t be verified – at least in the short term, even when it derives from a normally trustworthy intermediary and supports our own motives.

Gibbon Half A Chance

Last month, the International Primatological Society reported that nearly 50% of the world’s 634 primate species and subspecies are in danger of going extinct, with more than 70% of species in Asia coming under near term threat. Reading this on the way out to the USA earlier this month set a grim backdrop to an encounter I had very much been looking forward to.

Gibbons are found in three places: the jungles of Asia, the zoo, and, the subject of this post – a gibbon conservation center.

Northern White Cheeked Gibbons at the Gibbon Center. All rights reserved Tim Jones 2008.

It was with bleary eyes that Erin and I arrived at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita, California, at the virtuous hour of 7.15 a.m. Erin had arranged the visit with Director and founder Alan Mootnick, as an anniversary present (I am a lifelong fan of these hairy cousins). Not an all-comers zoo, the Gibbon Center welcomes groups and serious researchers by appointment, so the personal tour was a bonus; a little politeness and a sensible donation helps.

The declared mission of the Center, established in 1977, is to help ensure the survival, preservation, and propagation of all gibbon species in the wild and captivity, to provide a captive haven for gibbons as a complement to protecting them in the wild, to educate the public and to further our knowledge of gibbon care, and to support ongoing field projects.

Alan warmly welcomed us at the gate and introduced our feet to a tray of disinfectant. Gibbons are highly susceptible to human disease and, with forty in residence, precautions are essential. It is unsettling to learn that more than 75% of Americans have oral herpes but downright scary that the gibbons who contract it will be dead within four days. Volunteers are the lifeblood of this Center, but medical tests are a pre-qualification.

The wire fenced compound houses several individual cages of gibbon family units – typically a male, a female, and one or two offspring. The family theme is very strong and not artificial – this is how gibbons live. One group we became absorbed with comprised a darker haired, white-bewhiskered male, a golden female partner nursing a gangly infant of 1yr, a hyperactive younger son, and an older sister – visible to, but separated from, the group; the consequence of uncontrollable spats at meal times. Anthropomorphising animal behaviour may not be in vogue or politically correct with some, but after three hours close to these families the parallels in behaviour to our own are obvious – whether we like it or not.

A successful breeding programme is essential to meet the Center’s conservation goals, and there was evidence aplenty of this during our visit. Between the five families on which we focused, we saw three recent offspring (including the acrobatic ‘Canter’ in the photo above) and two evident pregnancies. Such prolific reproduction is one indicator that the animals are relatively happy in their captivity. Also, while the chainlink fencing looks intimidating to us, its regular geometry and strength makes it popular with the gibbons, who strangely have spurned more sophisticated apparatus provided for their brachiating delight (that is their characteristic swinging from arm to arm). We certainly saw no evidence of the repetitive and obsessive rocking behaviours characteristic of bored, disturbed or mistreated animals. With no less than nine separate feedings a day, there is little chance of gibbon ennuie setting in within this community.

While Mootnick clearly cares deeply about his charges, he is not overly sanctimonious in pursuing his task. He delights in the gibbon’s hesitant yet rapid two legged walk, likening it to a man walking on hot coals. Indeed, the gibbons’ entertainment value may be their salvation; during the tour a call came in from a major TV company keen to film at the Center, and its not the first time, as this sequence for the L.A. Times and this half-hour interview with Alan Mootnick shows.

Inevitably, the conservation business has its own politics. The main players are zoos providing a more corporate approach; then the ‘activists’ – who seem driven mostly by the principle of keeping gibbons in their countries of origin; then groups like Alan’s (his model is not unique) – which, while a team effort, is also personally inspired with a flexibility that I sensed is not always endearing to more regimented interests. But from the recent visits and best practice exchanges that Alan described – not to mention gibbon exchanges – the Center is an important part of an informal network that essentially pulls together. 2% of donations to the Center go to support projects devoted to conservation of wild gibbons.

Despite the Center’s success, encroaching humanity from an enlarging Santa Clarita is threatening the gibbons and driving the current imperative and funding appeal to relocate and expand operations. Details are on the Centre’s website.

I will be following the fortunes of these California residents with interest, and plan to call in at the Center again over the new year. In the meantime, I would encourage anyone to learn more about the plight of primates, and especially gibbons, and consider supporting the Gibbon Center if you are able.

Other Links

BBC online article by Russell Mittermeier of the International Union for Conservation of Nature