Drake University students visited Great Ape Trust of Iowa September 19, as part of the First-Year Seminar Program. The visitation by some 40 students was coordinated by Charlene Skidmore, assistant director of Drake’s First-Year Seminar Programs and hosted by Dr. Robert Shumaker, director of orangutan research at Great Ape Trust.  Shumaker is teaching an introduction to primatology course at Drake again this semester.

While the group represented a variety of studies, one of the goals of the visit was to introduce each student to research areas that integrate the study of science with language arts. 

During their 90-minute visit, students were introduced to the Great Ape Trust orangutans, briefed about the cognitive and communicative studies that occur both in the orangutan and bonobo scientific research programs, and informed of the plight of great apes in the wild.

Ape language pioneers Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a scientist with special standing at Great Ape Trust of Iowa, and Dr. Daune Rumbaugh, scientist emeritus, were among the featured speakers at the recent conference of the Institute on Religion in the Age of Science, a non-denominational society that promotes and facilitates ongoing dialogue between religion and science. Both members of IRAS and non-members congregate at the IRAS conference held annually at Star Island in New Hampshire.

To read about the conference, go here.

Photo: Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh with Kanzi, the bonobo with whom she collaborated and achieved groundbreaking results in ape language research.

Flood recovery efforts at Great Ape Trust continue at an impressive pace. When the Floods of ‘08 inundated the 230-acre campus in June, portions of the public viewing area near the orangutan home were destroyed.

This week, workers with Handy Guy construction of Des Moines began replacing the wooden planks of the seats. Despite these efforts, public visits to Great Ape Trust will not resume this fall due to the loss of our administrative offices.

Photos: Jason Northway cuts wooden slats for the seating area while Matt Coleman nails them into place.

Dr. Serge Wich, a Great Ape Trust of Iowa scientist and researcher who has spent much of his professional career studying wild orangutans, wrote a piece titled “The Ethical Value of the Forest” for the the Arcus Foundation’s annual report for 2007 distributed this week.

In the essay, Wich challenges readers to view the forests on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, the only places on Earth where rapidly disappearing orangutans can still be found, in both economic and ethical terms. Forest decimation is the primary cause of dire situation facing orangutans — at most, there are only 6,600 Sumatran and 54,000 Bornean orangutans — but there are still opportunities to conserve this magnificent species and thier once pristine habitat, Wich wrote.

The Arcus Foundation is a grant-making organization established in 2000 by Jon Stryker, heir to the Stryker Corp., a Kalamzzoo, Mich., medical technology company, to advance his interests in gay rights and great ape conservation. He has invested more than $247 million of his approximately $2 billion fortune in the foundation, and plans to give it another $120 million over the next few years.

To download the report in which Wich’s essay appears, click here. It is found on Page 6 of the pdf file. Also of interest is an essay by titled “The Moral Status of Animals” by Martha C. Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. That essay originally appeared in the Feb. 3, 2006 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Download it here.

Photo: A wild adult female orangutan. 

We met with the local people in the Nyabirasi Sector Our goals in this meeting were similar to the other meeting in the Ruhango Sector – inform local people about the objectives of the program, to show them the importance of the forest, and to invite them to reduce their encroaching activities and, therefore, work in collaboration with the program.

Those in attendance included the Mayor Ndimubahire, the land officer, the environment officer, the deputy police commander at the district level, and the captain of the army at the district level. There was also a journalist from the radio station in Gisenyi who interviewed me about the purpose of the meeting and the news was broadcast.

Photo: Madeleine Nyiratuza meeting with local people to explain the goals of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program.