Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ized that the BPF didn't stand a chance of addressing the deeper issues of conservation, of working
with community needs.
126
In 1997, on a night
Among the future members whom Sally met that night were Ted Green, an
anthropologist who pioneered studies on HIV prevention in Africa and who joined BCI's board, as
well as John Scherlis, a Harvard- and Cambridge-educated conservationist and zoologist who had
spent years studying elephants in Tanzania.
126
In 1998, they created
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and her husband, the scientist Duane Rumbaugh,
encouraged Sally to start an independent non-profit organization.
126
In 1999, Sally traveled
In Europe, Sally spent time in Antwerp with bonobo researchers Linda
Van Elsacker and Jef Dupain. Sally and Dupain got on well, appearing to be on the same page
about the importance of cooperation as regards conservation, though a few years later, as BCI and
Albert Lokasola worked to establish Kokolopori, they found themselves in conflict with Dupain,
who was by then in charge of African Wildlife Foundation's projects in the area (a position for
which, according to Sally, she had recommended him). In Germany, Sally visited Barbara Fruth
and Gottfried Hohmann, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
127
The most important connection
Kano's topic on bonobos,
The Last Ape: Pygmy Chimpanzee
Behavior and Ecology
, though released in Japanese in 1986, did not appear in English until 1992.
127
She copied his notebooks
Sally stayed at the Primate Research Institute in Inuyama (associated
with Kyoto University) for a month that autumn. She also met with Takeshi Furuichi and Gen'ichi
Idani, two researchers who would continue fieldwork at Wamba.
127
The report cites BCI
United States Agency for International Development,
The African Di-
aspora in the U.S. and Its Interaction with Biodiversity Conservation in Africa
, June 2012,
ht-
text in the USAID study reads:
One organization that has had tremendous success in working with the Diaspora is the Bonobo
Conservation Initiative, founded in 1998, and active in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) since 2001. BCI President Sally Coxe and other BCI founders partnered with the Con-
golese Diaspora in the U.S. from before the beginning of the program. On a personal quest to
learn Lingala, one of the main languages in DRC, Ms. Coxe joined a Congolese evangelical
church in the Washington, DC area and met individuals who were later instrumental in en-
abling her to set up a culturally appropriate and locally embedded and originated program on
the ground. Some of the individuals she met in the church went on to play significant roles in
BCI. One fellow church attendee served on the BCI Board of Directors and later returned to
DRC to work in the government, and later, the private sector, facilitating support for BCI and
its Congolese NGO partners. Congolese medical professionals in the Diaspora advised BCI on
creating a health clinic in Kokolopori. Others helped translate documents. Ms. Coxe has man-
aged to establish genuine and mutually respectful relationships with the Congolese Diaspora.
From facilitating an innovative Sister City cooperation between Falls Church City, Virginia
and Kokolopori in DRC (which hosts the community-based Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve), to
sponsoring an individual to learn how to set up eco-villages, creating his own NGO, and fa-
cilitating relationships with faith-based communities in the DRC, her partnerships have had a
transformative effect on the program. The Diaspora has many, varied relationships with BCI;
this would merit a small case study of its own. (13-14)
127
Sally's vision was
Peterson and Ammann,
Eating Apes
, 221.
127
As the war raged on
When the Second Congo War broke out, Alison Mize coordinated an emer-
gency fund-raising campaign to help conservationist Claudine André, who was then taking care of
the orphaned bonobos and who would go on to found Lola ya Bonobo. Mize recalls that BCI got
