Word: bonobo
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True enough, but I could be forgiven for expecting more. Bonobos are an endangered African ape found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.), the vast, sweltering river basin that is Africa's answer to the Amazon. Though they look like chimpanzees, they are a distinct species. They are slightly smaller, for one thing, the better to handle a life spent predominantly in trees. But it is the bonobos' social behavior that fascinates humans. While gorillas beat their chests and chimpanzees fight savage wars, bonobos appear to be largely animals of peace. They live communally, enjoy gender equality...
...promise that the peaceniks of the animal kingdom would show us what they're about. So far, there's been some rustling in the trees, a few shrieks and the occasional shadow swinging through the canopy. But there's been no hint even of romance, let alone the bonobo orgies I've read about. Patrick Mehlman, a conservationist and primatologist who has spent his life around African apes, senses my disappointment. "Just because you fly all this way," he says, "doesn't mean you're going...
...bonobos' peaceable nature, however, has not spared them an unhappy history. Like most great apes, they are in decline, victims of poachers who kill them for bush meat, loggers and miners who destroy their habitat and healers who prize their bones as part of a potion for pregnant women. Estimates of the surviving bonobo population range from a few thousand to the low tens of thousands. But every study indicates that the figure is falling...
Tusumba, 45, is a straight-backed, teetotaling former deputy governor of Kasai province who never quite fit in politics. He started to come to that conclusion in 2000, when his constituents brought him a baby bonobo as a gift. Tusumba realized the villagers had slaughtered a bonobo family to obtain the little female. Rather than raise her as a pet, he decided to make her part of his family. "I used to eat with her at my table," he says. When Tusumba's term as deputy governor ended in 2004, he started concentrating full time on conservation, knowing...
...What's more, the old top-down method of letting the government distribute the funds was done away with. Instead, conservation groups would ask the villagers what they wanted, deliver it themselves and make conservation a condition of that delivery. BCI's ultimate aim is the creation of a Bonobo Peace Forest, a series of linked preserves covering a great swath of central Congo...