Great Ape Trust’s conservation commitment to save wild apes and habitat eclipses $500,000

Des Moines, Iowa – January 29, 2009 – Great Ape Trust of Iowa officials are reporting another round of conservation grants totaling nearly $84,000, bringing to more than $540,000 the amount invested over four years to conserve wild apes and other endangered primates and their habitats. Over the period, Great Ape Trust has provided $381,239 in direct conservation aid to about two dozen international organizations, and $160,000 in support of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program, a 16-month-old reforestation effort in Rwanda.

At the same time the report was made, officials said Great Ape Trust’s conservation program is being restructured to assist two flagship programs – the new initiative in Rwanda and an orangutan field site in Sumatra – and increase the number of staff members supporting them.

All types of great apes in the wild are endangered, and their conservation has been an important component in Great Ape Trust’s four part-mission since the now internationally known scientific research institute opened six years ago on a 230-acre campus in southeast Des Moines. In the past, The Trust has given grants in the $5,000 to $10,000 range to a number of well-established and highly regarded projects, but as the organizations matures, a sharper conservation focus is required, said Dr. Benjamin Beck, Great Ape Trust’s director of conservation.

“The Trust is moving from a broad approach to ape conservation with small grants to a large number of worthy conservation projects managed by other organizations to a more focused concentration on two Great Ape Trust-managed programs that more closely track our own competencies and interests,” he said.

In 2008, the grants supported programs for all four types of great apes, including those conducting bonobo research and protection in the Salonga National Park and bonobo research at the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, protecting Cross River gorillas along the Cameroon-Nigeria border, supporting additional surveys of orangutans in Sumatra’s Batang Toru Forest, and a handful of projects aimed chimpanzee conservation throughout Africa.

Now, Great Ape Trust has prioritized two conservation efforts: the 15-month-old Gishwati Area Conservation Program in Rwanda and the Ketambe Research Center in northern Sumatra, where orangutans have been studied continuously since the early 1970s. Great Ape Trust staff members with field experience in both of those ape range countries – Dr. Serge Wich and Peter Clay – will be joining Beck in the conservation department.

Wich is co-research manager of the Ketambe Research Center in northern Sumatra. The historic scientific records on orangutans from the Ketambe field site have been entrusted to Great Ape Trust and are being carefully curated and mined for baseline data against which to establish long-term trends in population size, distribution and behavior. Folding field and captive research together is an untapped opportunity, offering great potential to Great Ape Trust.

Beck said that Clay brings to Great Ape Trust’s conservation efforts deep background in community engagement and his understanding of the cultural, social and historical realities in Rwanda will be beneficial in working with local citizens living near the Gishwati forest. “Peter is very conversant in these types of issue, and being able to spend more time on the project helps us get this project in started in the right direction,” Beck said. “He’s also had experience in Rwanda and can provide a cultural, social and historical context we wouldn’t otherwise have.”

Many Rwandans already know Clay from his past work in the African nation, which Beck says gives Great Ape Trust “instant credibility” as it further develops the Gishwati Area Conservation Program. Clay’s strengths complement those of Madeleine Nyiratuza, a Rwandan environmentalist and educator selected to direct the landmark forest restoration and ecological research effort, Beck said, and bring “additional horsepower to the effort.

Great Ape Trust’s 2008 conservation grant recipients included:

• Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, $5,250 to support Indonesian doctoral candidates working in the field, $10,000 to support the Ketambe Research Center and $$10,250 for the Batang Toru Survey.
• Associação Mico-Leão Dourado (AMLD, or Golden Lion Tamarin Association), $5,000 for land registration.
• Anne Russon/York University, $2,000 for the printing and distribution of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s Great Ape Reintroduction Guidelines in Indonesia.
• Wildlife Conservation Society, 5,000 for the protection of Cross River gorillas.
• Kibale Fuel Wood Project, $5,250, support of Science Centers in Uganda.
• Nicole Simmons, University of Minnesota/Jane Goodall Institute, $5,000 in support of publication and continued monitoring of the Kyambura Gorge chimpanzees in Uganda.
• Yale University, $10,000 in support of the Mainaro Chimpanzee Study in western Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
• Milwaukee Zoological Society, $10,000 for the study and protection of wild bonobos in the Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Partners in Conservation, $5,000 to provide fuel-efficient stoves reducing villagers’ reliance on the forest as part of the Nyungwe Forest Conservation in Rwanda.
• Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary, $5,000 to support bonobo care.
• Jane Goodall Institute-Africa, $5,000 to support the Bugoma Forest Protection program, which is aimed at ending bush meat hunting and snares used to capture wild chimpanzees in Uganda.