Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
While in Djolu, I visited the AWF office, a handsome brick building on a rise overlooking the
rainforest. It was one of the few places in the area with satellite Internet, but despite their better
funding, AWF's operations here struggled, like BCI's. They had had a large solar panel installa-
tion outside for months, but no one who worked there knew how to hook it up to the batteries, so
the only power came from the generator, which broke down often. Some of the employees were
friendly and told us that they ran the generator and Internet two hours twice a day for the benefit of
the community, but the man in charge of the generator told us, as soon as we arrived, that there was
no fuel, and turned it off.
I spoke to Phila Kasa Levo, the young Congolese man in charge of the Iyondje conservation
area, which consists of the two of Kokolopori's thirty-five villages that decided to work with AWF
(the remainder currently working with BCI and Vie Sauvage). There, bonobo habituation was being
done under the leadership of a Japanese researcher, and Phila explained the problems they faced:
among them, a lack of boots, ponchos, flashlights, and batteries. When I asked him about the Koko-
lopori Bonobo Reserve, his response in no way suggested conflict between BCI and AWF. He spoke
of it as a model site whose successes he hoped to emulate. I got the sense that there was no conflict
between Congolese, only between the two NGOs' administrations.
“BCI's biggest problem,” Albert told me, “was its war with AWF over the landscape. BCI star-
ted before AWF was in the landscape. AWF came and ignored the work done by BCI, but they
took some of BCI's research. AWF and BCI were put in the same landscape, but AWF wanted to
minimize the work done by BCI constantly to stop the competition. . . . The battle with AWF was
destructive for BCI. The partners, the donors, put their confidence in AWF, and the financing of
BCI in the landscape suffered.”
Albert went on to explain that he and BCI created Djolu's technical college with no money from
AWF. “If you want to have people involved with sound management of natural resources, what's
first?” he asked. “They need an education. Even if we put this money into the region, no one is edu-
cated, not even the directors of the territory.” The success of the college, he told me, was that other
NGOs, even AWF, hired the graduates. This was exactly what Vie Sauvage and BCI intended; his
only regret was that an alliance with AWF could have made the college larger, better equipped, and
available to more people.
He explained that over the years the Bongandu had come to appreciate the community con-
servation economic model. By protecting forests and bonobos, they could receive outside support,
generate new livelihoods, and increase the likelihood of foreigners visiting. Sites with habituated
bonobos were rare, so researchers, conservationists, and cinematographers had come. Over the
years, BCI brought in a BBC scouting crew for a documentary; a
Time
magazine reporter; photo-
grapher Christian Ziegler and science writer David Quammen for
National Geographic
; a film crew
from ABC TV Australia; a Harvard graduate student in evolutionary anthropology who carried out
months of field research on the bonobos; a scientist from the Max Planck Institute who trained field
staff in biological survey techniques; filmmaker and journalist Michael Werner; Paul Raffaele, who
wrote a
Smithsonian
magazine article about the bonobos that he later used for the bonobo section
in his book
Among the Great Apes
; Arne Schiøtz, Danish herpetologist and former head of conser-
vation for WWF-Europe; several members of Conservation International; and Russell Mittermeier,
head of CI, chair of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and one of the world's leading primate con-
servationists.
