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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2006
B O O K S
Two views of--
Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey
by Georgianne Nienaber
Universe (2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512), 2006. 255
pages paperback. $19.95.
Fearless fighter for gorillas
Gorilla Dreams purports to be posthumously narrated
by the late gorilla researcher Dian Fossey herself. Georgianne Nienaber
writes from what she believes to be Fossey's own perspective about how
she believed she was abused, swindled, maligned, manipulated, used, harassed
and obstructed by cruel and corrupt people, many of them representatives
of respected mainstream conservation charities.
Asks Nienaber in the Fossey persona, "How much of my legacy has been
used by fraudulent conservation authorities to collect funds from those
least able to afford them, only to have those moneys flow into corrupt
coffers, never to reach the gorillas?"
Other biographies such as Farley Mowat's Woman of the Mists offer accurate
and well researched accounts of Fossey's life and achievements, but Nienaber
goes further. She explores the relationship between Fossey and her favorite
gorillas to try to find out what sort of person Fossey really was--and
makes an eloquent plea for recognition of cross-species spiritual relationships:
"Creationists and scientists alike continue to damn me for my anthropomorphic
approach to gorillas, which has risen to the stature of a mortal sin in
the duel worlds of fundamentalist religion and 'proper’ scientific
endeavors.'"
Through the device of the common African belief that the spirit of the
deceased lives on and guides the descendants, Nienaber uses fictional
conversation with the souls of departed gorillas to describe the bond
which must have existed between Fossey and gorillas like Digit.
Digit asks Fossey, "What is a friend but a single soul dwelling in
two bodies?"
Fossey during her years in Rwanda fought efforts to introduce eco-tourism
with the arguments that Volcano National Park was unprotected and rife
with poachers; tourist interaction would habituate the gorillas and render
them easy prey to poachers; and that the Mountain Gorilla Project, which
favored eco-tourism, had an appetite for fundraising which was not matched
by desire to protect the gorillas from poachers.
Nienaber's view, expressed in Fossey's name, is that "Even though
Rwanda has received more conservation aid than any African country, most
of that money has gone into the private coffers of corrupt officials.
This theoretical conservation is embraced by African government officials,
foreign aid organizations and propaganda machines, all struggling to win
the hearts and minds of the African populace. It is hidden behind the
political motives of various aid organizations that espouse community
outreach but serve more sinister masters," including some of the
eventual directors of the Rwandan genocide.
"I did not want the Digit Fund to be another vague conservation plan
spending half its money on overhead, a fourth going to tickle the egos
of top ranking Africans and the final fourth going into actual conservation
schemes," Fossey laments through Nienaber.
--Chris Mercer
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
South Africa Self-defeating
Nienaber is convincing as the voice of Fossey, including
in her obsessive mistrust and denunciations of almost everyone who was
in actual proximity to her, but readers will draw differing conclusions
as to Fossey's credibility.
The major criticisms of Fossey, voiced by many over the past 25 years
or more, have recently been summarized by acquaintances Robert Sapolsky,
who did similar studies for more than 20 years among baboons in Kenya,
and Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, Quaker peace activists and teachers who
were for a time her assistants. Vedder was brought to the scene of Fossey's
murder to help officially identify the remains.
Sapolsky wrote in A Primate's Memoir (2001) that while he initially idiolized
Fossey, he came to believe that she was the "probable cause of more
deaths of gorillas than if [she] had never set foot in Rwanda." Her
ruthless defense of gorillas against accidental snaring by subsistence
hunters of smaller mammals led to deliberate retaliatory massacres of
gorillas, Sapolsky believes, which led the killers to the discovery that
their remains could be sold. Previously incidental killings rapidly became
an industry.
In The Kingdom of Gorillas, by Vedder and Weber, details Fossey's apparent
inability to distinguish poachers and criminals from other Rwandans, along
with binge alcoholism that others had mentioned before Fossey ever went
to Africa. Vedder and Weber believe that Fossey's hostility toward Rwandans
and eco-tourism mostly helped the loggers and cattle ranchers who with
World Bank funding destroyed much of the gorillas' habitat.
Vedder and Weber broke with Fossey to devote most of the next 20 years
to introducing regulated eco-tourism to give the gorillas economic value,
and to promoting ecological education as a core curriculum in Rwandan
schools.
Nienaber accurately reflects Fossey's antipathy toward Vedder and Weber,
whom she called "the V-W couple," but the words and feelings
Nienaber attributes to Fossey scarcely refute the "V-W" criticisms.
Weber, for example, is accused of laziness, a bizarre allegation to make
against anyone who travels halfway around the world and treks up a mountain
to live for years without modern conveniences.
Sapolsky, Vedder and Weber--among many others who visited Fossey's Karisoke
research station---each concluded that Fossey's obsession with poachers
inverted the actual order of threats to gorillas and their habitat, and
overlooked the reality that if the habitat could not be made economically
productive in a manner accommodating gorillas, it would be lost.
While the outside world generally jumped to the conclusion that Fossey
was murdered by poachers, whose activity she detailed in Gorillas In The
Mist, it is of note that most investigators, both then and retrospectively,
suspect that the killing was an inside job, probably involving one or
more of her many disgruntled ex-employees. Nienaber details the scene
and the physical evidence, but draws no conclusions.
Fossey was correct in her suspicion that gorilla tourism would be exploited
as a "cash cow" by both African governments and outside conservation
groups. The Digit Fund that Fossey herself created went through a series
of messy legal actions involving various claimants to her legacy, resulting
in the separate existence of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Europe.
Responding to concerns expressed in July 2005 by Rwandan president Paul
Kagame, U.S. Representative Jim Oberstar (D-Minnesota) in November 2005
asked USAid to audit the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, for alleged
nonfulfillment of pledges to promote community development in the Karisoke
region.
E-mails from Nienaber to ANIMAL PEOPLE have raised similar questions.
--Merritt Clifton
Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from
Extinction
by John Moir
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2006.
187 pages, hardcover. $24.95.
Science writer John Moir relates in this book the drama
of the last-ditch captive breeding program that undoubtedly saved the
Californian condor from extinction. Inter-agency politics and eloquent
lobbying by non-interventionists, led by Friends of the Earth founder
David Brower, nearly kept the Condor Recovery Program from starting.
Brower, who previously headed the Sierra Club and later founded Earth
Island Institute, argued that capturing the last wild California condors
for captive breeding would set a bad precedent for reducing endangered
wildlife to zoo specimens, that reintroduction would probably fail because
captive-bred condors would not learn from their parents how to survive
in the wild, and that recovery efforts should focus on protecting the
condors' vast natural range instead.
Few advocates of endangered species and wildlife habitat disagreed with
Brower in principle, but in the specific case of the California condor
there were just six left in the wild when the last were captured in June
1986. Though long-lived under favorable conditions, they had suffered
such a high mortality rate during the preceding decades that imminent
extinction in the wild appeared to be a virtual certainty.
Noel Snyder of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and staff at the Los
Angeles Zoo and San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park managed the captive
breeding program, after Snyder and other scientists documented the reasons
why California condors were no longer thriving in their southern California
and Arizona native environment. Condors were being electrocuted by utility
power lines, and dying from ingesting inedible trash.
But the chief cause of condor deaths was hunting--not so much because
condors were occasionally shot or poisoned as an inaccurately perceived
threat to livestock, though some were, as because lead shot riddled much
of the carrion that they depend on for food.
Snyder used radiography to prove that when a lead bullet smacks into a
deer, lead particles spray into the flesh of the animal in sufficient
concentration to kill condors through lead poisoning. Snyder also found
that lead poisoning can afflict hunters and their families.
Nonetheless, the hunting industry for the most part continues to oppose
the gradual replacement of lead shot with steel and alloy substitutes.
Phasing in the transition has been underway now for more than 20 years,
while lead poisoning and ingesting other toxic waste continue to be leading
causes of death among reintroduced condors.
Moir estimates the cost of saving the California condor at about $40 million,
and debates the merits of expending such large sums to save one species.
He points out that many other species benefit both directly and indirectly
from the condor reintroduction.
--Chris Mercer
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
South Africa
The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery
Ballantine Books (c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway MD 18-2, New York,
NY 10019), 2006. Hard cover, 228 pages, $21.95.
The Good Good Pig celebrates 14 years of life with a pig, and the love
of the woman, Sy Montgomery, who saved his life--
"As I walked beside him, I began to rub his belly and grunt our favorite
mantra: "Good, good pig. Big, good pig. Fine, fine swine. Good. Good,
good." He crumpled to the ground and rolled over in porcine bliss.
And then I lay down beside him, beneath an apple tree. As long as I lay
there and stroked him, he wouldn't get up and leave. And that was how
I spent that afternoon: lying beside someone I loved, watching the clouds
and the dragonflies and the sun streaming through the leaves of the apple
tree." Christopher Hogwood was born on a farm where pigs are raised
for the dinner table. As the runt of all runts, the piglet was rather
a sickly chap. He was given to Montgomery to take home to see if she could
help him to survive. With love and much attention, he grew to be a whopping
750 pounds, bringing people in Montgomery's small New Hampshire town out
of themselves, making sad children smile again, instilling through his
presence and personality the sense of love and peace that all people need
to feel. 'Though we didn't realize it at the time," Montgomery writes,
from the first "Christopher was already bringing to us the blessings
for which pigs have been credited for centuries: strength, luck, friends,
and even family."
Pigs are known for their intelligence and social instincts. An accomplished
escape artist, Christopher would take daily walkabouts to meet the neighbours,
but most importantly, to look for something appetizing. This is a delightful
book, full of humor, honesty and love.
Unfortunately, Montgomery does not include precautionary warnings about
the problematic aspects of keeping pet pigs.
That will alarm readers who remember coping with the aftermath of the
Vietnamese potbellied pig fad of the 1980s and early 1990s, including
the subsequent collapse of many underfunded and badly managed "pig
sanctuaries."
Reputable pig sanctuaries, such Ironwood in Arizona, still house dozens
of aging pigs who were carelessly acquired and then dumped during the
pigs-as-pets fad, and would rather not see it revived.
--Beverley Pervan
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
South Africa
Hiss, Whine & Start Over
by Jane Caryl Mahlow, DVM
Cuppa Press (17181 FM 487, Bartlett, TX 76511), 2006.
222 pages, paperback. $14.95.
A romantic novel is always something good to cuddle up on the couch
with. And this is such a novel, about people and animals too.
Carly works in an animal shelter, three years divorced, with a broken
down house and a lonely broken down life, both of which need fixing.
When her boss at the animal shelter has to take an extended leave because
his wife is ill, Carly is asked to take over. She is very uncertain that
she is capable of doing the job required of her. She now must make not
just work-related decisions but decisions about the lives of the animals
at the shelter where she has been elevated to "top dog."
Carly is a lovely character and easy to relate to. Through her dedicated
work, mistakes and achievements we meet all the wonderful, funky, and
not so great people who have a life-changing effect on Carly as she tries
to manage a poor budget, desperate employees, and the politics that go
with trying to make ends meet.
We also meet Hailey, the plain unwanted dog whose life is saved at the
last moment, the parrot whose songs always erupt at the wrong time, and
ordinary cats and dogs who are always there to welcome their guardian
home.
"The book was penned with two purposes in mind, both expressions
of the heart," says author Jane Caryl Mahlow, DVM. "First, the
book was written in honor of animal care and control employees and volunteers,
in order that their story be told. Second, perhaps the tale will instil
in the public an understanding of its obligation to curtail pet overpopulation
and the mistreatment of animals."
--Beverley Pervan.
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
South Africa
Around the Next Corner by Elizabeth Wrenn
New American Library (c/o Penguin, 375 Hudson St.,
New York, NY 10014), 2006. 320 pages, paperback. $12.95.
Deena, a mother of three, married for what seems to be forever, overweight,
insecure and suffering all the emotions involved with "midlife invisibility,"
is locked into a marriage that has become stale.
With one child away at college, two bored and selfish teenagers, and a
husband so busy at work that she rarely sees him, Deena feels a void in
her life as a wife and mother. Desperately seeking to add meaning to her
life of drudgery, Deena decides to raise a puppy for K-9 Eyes for the
Blind.
Little does she realise how much change this will bring. The puppy opens
new doors for Deena and helps her make new friends, transforming not only
her day to day existence, but her personality too. Her self-confidence
increases, rocking the family hierarchy. She earns the respect of neighbours,
friends and even--eventually--her family.
To make the novel more authentic, Elizabeth Wrenn raised a puppy herself.
One might wish that she had become involved in fostering rescued animals,
rather than raising a purpose-bred pup, and had written from that perspective,
but her story will nonetheless attract the empathy of rescuers and foster
caregivers, whose experiences are often closely comparable.
--Beverley Pervan.
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
South Africa
Timothy; Or Notes Of An Abject Reptile
by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Alfred A. Knopf (1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019), 2006.
178 pages, hardcover. $16.95.
This unusual little book is a philosophical look at the foibles of the
humans from the perspective of a wise and erudite tortoise. Timothy the
Tortoise looks up from his alien English country garden, and wonders about
the human race. Why, he asks himself, are humans generally so useless?
Why can they not do for themselves naturally the same as all other creatures?
To survive they have to specialize and perform one particular trade to
the exclusion of all else in the universe. Why are they so profoundly
ignorant about the natural world, supposing always that animals are incapable
of reasoning and are merely guided by blind instinct, when the evidence
to the contrary is all around them if they will only open their eyes and
their minds?
Told in terse, truncated sentences, the book is based upon the life of
an actual tortoise who lived in 18th century English naturalist and curate
Gilbert White's garden. The language used is authentic 18th century English
and the book therefore requires, and provides, a lengthy glossary in order
to aid interpretation. Intellectually stimulating, the book is as fresh
and different as the whole idea of a myopic, well-intentioned naturalist
being studied by a rational reptile.
--Chris Mercer
For The Love Of A Dog
by Patricia B. McConnell, Ph.D.
Ballantine Books, Random House,
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
322 pages, hardcover. $24.95.
McConnell, a zoology teacher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
wrote The Other End of the Leash, which we reviewed for Animal People
in 2004.
For The Love Of A Dog further draws upon her considerable experience in
dog training and treating canine aggression to offer insights into the
canine mind.
This is not a manual on dog training, although McConnell presents comparisons
of dog and human thought processes which could make dog training much
easier. Nor is it a scientific treatise on anthropomorphism. McConnell's
goal to make canine behavioral research more accessible to the public.
She explains the biology of emotions, then focuses on fear, anger, joy
and love, teaching the reader how to identify each of these emotions in
dogs from their expressions, postures, and activity.
A particularly helpful section of photographs at the end of the book illustrates
vividly dogs' facial expressions as they express their emotions.
McConnell concludes that, notwithstanding the scientistic tradition of
denying animal consciousness, and of deriding those who argue that animals
have complex mental capacity, dogs do have a rich and complex emotional
life.
--Chris Mercer
Capers In The Churchyard:
Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror
by Lee Hall
Nectar Bat Press (777 Post Road, Suite 205, Darien, CT 06820), 2006.
162 pages, paperback. $14.95.
Friends of Animals legal director Lee Hall's short book attempts to
provide a lesson in strategy for animal rights campaigners. Hall argues
that the goal of animal advocacy should be to change the aspects of human
culture that are based upon dominating and exploiting non-human animals.
Violent methods, such as those used by the Animal Liberation Front and
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, are in Hall's view merely the "greening
of hate’" and counter-productive. Most significantly to Hall,
they discredit the campaigns of those who seek radical reform by non-violent
means. Hall sees the excesses of the environmental thugs ensnaring all
animal activists in the association with terrorism amplified by threatened
industries and their stooges in government.
Hall's employer, FoA, has particular reason to be wary, since FoA was
the victim of extensive covert infiltration funded by U.S. Surgical, culminating
in the heavily publicized November 1988 arrest of fringe activist Fran
Trutt in the act of planting a bomb in the U.S. Surgical parking lot.
The plot was aided and abetted throughout by FoA volunteer Mary Lou Sappone,
who turned out to be working for a private security firm (now defunct)
contracted to U.S. Surgical.
Beyond just the matter of rotten apples giving the whole barrel a bad
name, Hall believes that the thugs miss the whole point of animal rights
advocacy, which is to create a culture of respect for all animals, human
and non-human, and to live in harmony with nature. This, she says, cannot
be done by adopting the authoritarian mindset and brutal methods of the
animal abusers.
So far, so good. A well researched and cogent critique of eco-thuggery
is overdue, and Hall's well-written, concise and closely reasoned book
is commendable. This is a significant contribution to animal rights literature.
However Hall is somewhat coy about spelling out her alternative strategies
and explaining precisely how a long-term non-violent strategy can overcome
various practical obstacles. Hall criticises the militants for treating
others with open disdain’ and scorns the militant rationale that
the non-violent approach is not working.
Yet Hall does not respond effectively to the militant belief that nothing
will change in the foreseeable future without confrontation to raise public
awareness. Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has drawn
a distinct line between his type of open confrontation and the covert
activity of the ALF, including in a 1995 ANIMAL PEOPLE guest column, but
apologists for covert and even violent actions hold that the difference
is merely a matter of degrees, that the educational approach Hall espouses
is conspicuously unsuccessful in effecting short-term remedies, and that
aggressive incremental direct action is appropriate meanwhile, even if
industry propagandists turn this to their benefit.
Hall approvingly cites Martin Luther King Jr. on the tactic of boycotting
delinquent industries. This should bring up two issues for discussion,
but does not.
One is that boycotts have rarely won much for animals, and have often
merely displayed to industries and governments that animal advocates are
seldom capable of sustaining an effective boycott.
The other is that boycotts may cause much collateral economic damage to
innocent people. Apart from the ethical issue that collateral damage to
the innocent should raise, there is the risk that it will provoke a backlash--as
has occurred in response to boycotts of Japan, Canada, and South Korea
called to protest against whaling, sealing, and dog and cat eating. Abusive
and offensive practices that were never condoned by majorities of citizens
are now politically defended as aspects of national culture.
Hall regards many mainstream animal welfarists as part of the problem,
not the solution. Activists who press for larger cages, she argues, play
into the hands of industry public relations, by accepting the need for
cages instead of campaigning for empty cages.
Hall's allegations that mainstream animal welfare organizations are irrelevant
and complacent is lucid and well informed, if uncompromising and self-righteous--for
example, in her dismissive attitude towards Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society.
Humankind has waged an undeclared war on animals from the beginning, and
whilst we can all agree that thuggery is offensive and counter-productive,
there is no doubt in this reviewer's ideology that intelligent confrontation
of animal abusers is both necessary and effective.
--Chris Mercer