Biology Reference
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DRC, where it borders Uganda. The damage was long lasting, and the casualties from 1998 to 2007,
mostly as a result of disease and starvation, were as high as 5.4 million. Approximately forty-five
thousand are still dying from the effects of the war each month.
In Djolu territory, villagers described how soldiers removed wires from the few buildings that
had them, taking light bulbs, sockets, and switches, stripping people of clothing, and raping girls of
ten or eleven. Though the government remained in power here, the people, as elsewhere, fled into
the forests, sustaining themselves with mushrooms, grubs, caterpillars, and bushmeat. Their cas-
sava fields, harvested by soldiers, weren't replanted, so that after the war, there was no regular food
source.
In DC, Sally concentrated her efforts on the Bonobo Protection Fund. She traveled within the
US for its board meetings, writing copy to cover her expenses and visiting Sue Savage-Rumbaugh,
Kanzi, and Panbanisha often, first in Georgia and later in Iowa. As Sally tried to understand how
she could bring together what she'd learned in the Congo—about the needs of the people and their
relationship to bonobos and the forest—with BPF's activities, she realized that BPF's mandate was
too limiting. It didn't allow for the sustainable livelihood projects and community building neces-
sary to promote conservation. Thinking back to the people she had met in Wamba, she understood
that humans had to see themselves as part of the ecosystem. There had to be an explicit exchange,
one based not on exploitation of the forest but on the people's protection of it in return for jobs and
new sources of livelihood.
In 1997, on a night when the topic tour for Frans de Waal's Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape came to
the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and Sally was handing out literature for the BPF, she met sev-
eral people who would become founding members of BCI, among them Alison Mize, the manager
of the zoo's bookstore. Mize contacted her afterward, and they agreed that the Bonobo Protection
Fund was too limiting. In 1998, they created the Bonobo Conservation Initiative. Its mission was to
work in the spirit of bonobo cooperation to provide a network of collaborative action to protect the
bonobos and their habitat, while empowering the Congolese to take the lead in doing conservation
work and community organizing for protected areas.
Sally hosted meetings, inviting anthropologists, economists, and ecologists to look at how to
save both an individual species and the Congo rainforest as a whole. They discussed engaging with
the cultural values of local people and building an economy that would depend on bonobos. It soon
became clear that unless they could harness the will of the Congolese, the bonobos would vanish.
Sally considered how to expand on cultural taboos against bonobo hunting and teach the people that
hunting and selling bonobos was illegal. If conservation could bring cash flow, the people would
see the value of protecting wildlife, and if they were given the means to pursue an education in con-
servation, they would gain prestige and their local expertise would benefit the conservation effort.
In 1999, Sally traveled to Europe and Japan to continue her education and invite the few bonobo
researchers to participate in BCI's efforts. She wanted to involve as many people as possible and
thereby increase the available knowledge about bonobos and conservation. The most important con-
nection she made was with Takayoshi Kano. She stayed with him in Japan, and he became the hon-
orary chair of BCI's advisory council. Sally was still torn between writing about bonobos and try-
ing to make the story she wanted to write happen. Together she and Kano went over his collection
of folktales and signed an agreement to co-author a topic about Congolese bonobo folklore. She
copied his notebooks of folktales told by the people of Wamba since the mid-1970s, as well as cas-
sette recordings of their stories.
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