Framing a Future for African Apes with Gregg Tully of Pan African Sanctuary Alliance | S1E9
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Gerry:
Every year, it’s estimated that over 3,000 of Africa’s Bonobos, chimps, gorillas, and smaller primates like monkeys are poached for their bush meat, smuggled and sold through the illegal pet trade, or end up at the end of a chain outside a roadside bar or tourist hotel. It’s not a pretty picture for primates, but it’s all part of a huge and growing illegal trafficking nightmare. But for a few lucky ones, the nightmare ends in confiscation and rescue, and they end up at one of 23 PASA accredited sanctuaries in 13 countries across Africa. So, who is PASA? To tell us about this relatively unknown but critically important organization is my guest today, Gregg Tully. Gregg is the executive director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance or PASA. Under Gregg’s leadership, PASA has grown to become a major player in the hope and the future of Africa’s great apes and primates. This is Talking Apes where we explore the world of apes and primates with experts, conservationists, and passionate primate lovers from around the world. Talking Apes is a podcast that gets to the very heart of what’s happening with and to apes like us. The Talking Apes podcast is made possible by generous support from listeners like you to nonprofit GLOBIO at G-L-O-B-I-O.org.
Gerry:
Gregg, welcome to Talking Apes. It’s really great to have you on.
Gregg:
Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Gerry:
Gregg and I have known each other for a while, and we happen to live in the same city, Portland, Oregon. We don’t bump into each other all the time. We’re sort of on the other side of the city, and especially during this COVID pandemic, neither one of us have been out running around as much as we’d like. So I said in the intro, you covered 23 sanctuaries in 13 countries. Is that true?
Gregg:
Yes, that is true.
Gerry:
Why do you need 23 sanctuaries? I mean, four or five I could see, but…
Gregg:
Yeah, we need many more than 23 sanctuaries actually. I mean, one of the most difficult questions that we get from people is when they say, when are you gonna start a sanctuary in Angola? We need a sanctuary in Guinea-Bissau. We need a sanctuary in The Central African Republic. And so there actually are still a lot of gaps that we aren’t able to fill yet. Why do we need so many sanctuaries? Well, each of these – I mean, we call them sanctuaries, but it really does so much more than that. You know, they’re all running education programs, community based conservation programs. A lot of these organizations are, you know, working with governments on law enforcement and lobbying to create new national parks. And there’s a huge need for these grassroots organizations that are working on the ground to protect wildlife and their habitat. You know, they’re the big global organizations that tend most of the time to work on a landscape scale or use a policy approach. And there’s really a desperate need for organizations that understand the local culture and know people in the community, know community leaders, have good relationships with government officials who are involved in fighting wildlife trafficking and protecting national parks, et cetera. Well, there’s absolutely a need.
Gerry:
Well, let’s back up a minute then and explain. So you’re the executive director of PASA. Let’s just maybe give me the short version of who, what, where, why is PASA? If we have all these sanctuaries, why do we need yet another organization?
Gregg:
It might make the most sense if I start with how PASA was created. So going back 21 years ago, there were more and more primate sanctuaries being created in Africa. A lot of them were started by someone who rescued a chimp and then rescued another chimp and then accidentally founded a sanctuary. People working in primate conservation and primatologists in Africa were seeing all these different sanctuaries forming, but they’re seeing a lack of communication. And so they organized a meeting in Uganda in 2000 and brought together the founders and leaders of these different sanctuaries. And a major question that came up with this was, do you all want a way to communicate more effectively with each other and stay in touch? And the sanctuaries said they really do, you know, a lot of them were just stumbling through on their own trying to, you know, create best practices from scratch and learning how to navigate governments and confiscations and animal care.
Gregg:
And so there was really a need voiced by the sanctuaries, and it was really the sanctuaries that created PASA. You know, over the next couple of years, it became a registered nonprofit based in Portland in the U.S., but it’s created by these sanctuaries in Africa, and that’s still very much our focus. I think that’s important. It really gets down to the core values of PASA. It wasn’t started by some American people who wanted to do some good in Africa. It was, you know, created by the people running these sanctuaries who wanted to have better communication with each other. So PASA started by having a meeting every year, bringing together the leaders of these sanctuaries, like that Hertz meeting. And pretty quickly developed a lot of other roles. You know, we now have an accreditation process where all of our members meet high standards for animal care and for organizational sustainability. We give emergency grants because you know, things go wrong in Africa pretty regularly. We help them with their education programs. We help them with networking, so we’ve started to fill a lot more roles over time.
Gerry:
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Well, maybe explain a little bit about – I mean, we use that word sanctuary. How is a PASA member sanctuary in let’s say Gabon, or Cameroon, or Uganda, or something – how is that different than a zoo?
Gregg:
Yeah. That’s a question that we get a lot. Well, even the word sanctuary is used in different meanings by different people, but I’ll speak specifically about PASA member sanctuaries. All of the animals that they take in are rescued. Our members only breed animals if it’s part of a reintroduction program. And so the focus is really on addressing problems of the bushmeat trade, and the animals that are orphaned by the trade, and illegal wildlife trafficking, and people illegally keeping animals, keeping wildlife as pets. So the focus is really on addressing those problems and rescuing animals as part of solving those problems, as opposed to the focus being on breeding animals in order to maintain a population in captivity for the purposes of visitors or for educating people. I mean, a lot of the sanctuary directors say they would love it if their sanctuary went out of business, if there was no more need for animals to be rescued, and they wouldn’t need to continue the animal care and could focus their efforts a lot more on other aspects of conservation. That’s not going to happen in the near future, unfortunately, but that’s a longer term dream.
Gerry:
Yeah. Well, no, not if it sounds like you need even more sanctuaries in other countries. It sounds like the problem is one that’s growing, and we know from the work that we do that it is a growing problem. There seems to be more and more confiscations and especially this past year or so with Covid. It seems that oddly – and maybe you could shed some light on that – but it seems that there’s been an increase in the number of rescues in this past year, year and a half. Why is that?
Gregg:
Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of reports from members all around Africa of increased confiscations, increased signs of trafficking. I mean, I don’t know of any formal research that has been done on this or any quantified data, but yeah, the people that we talk to around Africa widely believe that because of the pandemic, a lot of government officials have been working at home instead of working in their posts. There are fewer rangers patrolling the national parks now, you know, fewer security at the border crossings. So this has created a lot of openings for trafficking. Sadly, as a result of covid, it seems to be easier to smuggle wildlife now because there’s just less presence of security.
Gerry:
Has that changed some of your focus as an organization? I mean, do you see that you’re doing some things that you weren’t planning on doing because of this?
Gregg:
I wouldn’t say it’s changed our focus because the rescues and especially linking the rescues to law enforcement has always been a focus, but we’re just doing a lot more of it. I mean, one example that comes to mind is Taku Lama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone. In a normal year, they might rescue a few chimps, maybe not even that many. And in the last year and a half or so, they’ve rescued 23 chimpanzees. This is a huge burden for them. We recently worked with them to run a fundraising campaign to enable them to triple the size of their enclosure for baby orphan chimps because it was bursting at the seams. So it hasn’t changed our direction, but we’ve had to focus a lot more on supporting our members to be able to accommodate all these newly confiscated animals.
Gerry:
I know that a lot of the sanctuaries depend on – while they don’t really have a lot of tourists necessarily coming and going. Even though from the few that I visited that do have some tourist base, especially local schools may show up or something for their education programs. But one of the places it seems that a lot of the sanctuaries depend on is volunteers paying to come. And so there’s some residual income that comes from volunteers and volunteers raising money. And that seems like it’s been a big hit in their revenue stream this year – the last 18 months because of Covid.
Gregg:
Yeah, it’s been devastating. The PASA members are really diverse. Some of them, especially in East Africa, get a lot of revenue from typical tourism. But you’re absolutely right. A lot of them get a substantial amount of money from volunteers who specifically go to Africa to be able to volunteer with primates. It’s been shocking. And some of them, especially in the early days of the pandemic, you know, many of them had to pause a lot of their programs, the education work and the conservation programs. Some of them had to lay off staff, sadly. And PASA as the Alliance, one of our roles is filling in gaps for our members. And so we basically dropped everything and did a really strong fundraising drive to try to raise support to ensure that none of our members had to shut down permanently and to help them maintain high quality animal care and restart their programs as soon as possible. The early days of the pandemic were really worrying, but I’m happy to say that it was really successful. We raised far more emergency support for members than we ever had before. Altogether we gave $330,000 in emergency grants to 18 of our members to help them get through the pandemic. And none of our members had to close.
Gerry:
And is most of that support coming from individuals who are donating to PASA?
Gregg:
it’s a mix. It’s a mix of individual donors around the world and foundations, zoos, other nonprofits. A lot of organizations that aren’t normally grant giving organizations stepped up and helped us because they understand how critical the role of these sanctuaries is.
Gerry:
Right. Wow.
Gregg:
So it was interesting to see because the pandemic, you know, a lot of our sort of obvious funders had to scale back their giving because they were having their own financial struggles. But a lot of people who we never expected to give supported really generously for the sanctuaries.
Gerry:
Well, that kind of leads me to another question I had for you, and that was, I mean, you’ve worked in the course of your career, you’ve worked with a number of non-profit animal welfare groups around the world. I mean, here in the U.S, I know you were in Nepal, and in different aspects, and this is the first time, if I if I’m correct, it’s the first time that you’ve worked with primates and you came to work for primate groups. How is that different? How is working with primate sanctuaries different than working with other kinds of animal groups?
Gregg:
Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. I can start by saying I got a PhD in biology years ago, so that was focused on animals in the wild. And as I was finishing that up, I turned to the nonprofit sector and eventually got involved in organizations largely helping to manage stray dog populations in Nepal and in Thailand. So it was exciting to become involved in wildlife again, where I took the job with PASA, like, as kind of getting back to my roots a little bit. There are some real strong similarities. Managing an animal care facility in a developing country has a lot of similarities, whether it’s a dog shelter in Asia or a primate sanctuary in Africa. I used to run Soy dog foundation in Thailand, and in Southeast Asia there’s a dog meat trade where dogs are smuggled, you know, largely from Thailand into Vietnam and some other countries in the area. And it’s similar in some ways to the bushmeat trade in Africa, this sort of illegal wildlife trade that’s just out in the open and it’s all not even hidden. So there are a lot of similarities, but obviously there are a lot of huge differences as well. I definitely had a lot to learn when I started. One thing is protecting endangered species rather than stray dogs and cats where there’s an overpopulation. There’s some obviously fundamental differences there.
Gerry:
Well, I would think there would be a lot of bureaucratic issues too because with the PASA sanctuaries, we’re looking at a lot of endangered species, a lot of them that are on the CITES list and other lists that are not legally allowed to be traded back and forth. How much of the politics do you find yourself getting caught up in?
Gregg:
Yeah, that can be very complicated. Fortunately when it comes to a primate needing to be rescued that’s in a country where there’s already a PASA member, generally that PASA member can handle it themselves. They have strong relationships with government agencies, with law enforcement, and they can take care of all of that. But when the animal’s in a country where there isn’t a sanctuary, or at least not a proper sanctuary, often PASA steps in and coordinates that rescue. And it can be tremendously complicated. With endangered species, you typically need CITES permits from the government that the animal is traveling from and the government of the sanctuary where it’s traveling to; you can get health inspections. And with some of these, especially with great apes, with these high profile rescues, it just seems like every government agency wants to get involved.
Gregg:
You know, the foreign ministry, the environmental ministry, Interpol seems like everybody starts demanding a letter of support from their counterpart in the other country. So these rescues of great apes and other endangered species get extremely bureaucratic and it’s frustrating. Sometimes animals are stuck for months or even years in horrific situations because, you know, maybe we built a relationship with one government official, but then there was an election, they lost their job. There’s a new guy, he doesn’t know who we are, we have to go back and start over again. Yeah, that’s one of the big challenges. It’s another thing that I think a lot of people don’t understand all the facets of these international rescues of endangered species. You know, they don’t understand, we can’t just drive out and pick the animal up and drive it to a sanctuary. It involves not just the permits, but cargo flights and vets who are actually trained to deal with wildlife. And in some of the countries we work in, there are no vets who have wildlife experience. So we have to actually arrange for a primate vet to fly in, do health inspections, blood tests, permits. It’s not easy.
Gerry:
Oh, man. And the cost to that must be enormous if you have to start flying in vets from other places. And I would assume there has to be a vet that’s recognized by the government that you’re going into so that the work they do will be authentic and recognized as well. So yeah. What a nightmare. I know it can be – I know with CITES it can be an incredible nightmare. I remember a couple of years ago I was in a situation where we heard about a baby gorilla, a lowland gorilla that was being held, and they were trying to get it out of the country to a sanctuary in another country. And because of all the bureaucracy, it ended up taking over a year. And in the course of that year, the baby gorilla died.
Gerry:
It was so frustrating for the couple of people that were involved, that I knew because they were just saying, this is like one of those things where a couple hundred dollars in illegal CITES paper and you could just go get it. It was like, if you wanted to cheat the system, you could just go get this thing. But everybody was trying to play by the rules, obviously. And the feeling was that there were enough bureaucrats sitting in the way that were saying they want – each one wanted their cut of it to make this thing go through. And at the end of the day, none of them really cared if this thing lived or died and it ended up dying. My heart goes out to you, because I know you must be at the, you know, you’re at the sharp end of that in trying to make that happen. And sometimes it just gets really frustrating.
Gregg:
Yeah. Is this the gorilla in Angola that you’re talking about?
Gerry:
Yeah, that was one of, yeah, one of ’em. Yeah.
Gregg:
Yeah. That was heartbreaking. It’s devastating when, you know, we spend months trying to rescue an animal and then we find out that it died of neglect or it died of a disease that would’ve been treatable if there was a vet on site. It’s hard.
Gerry:
Yeah. It indeed is.
Gregg:
It’s even harder for the people on the ground, the sanctuaries that are directly taking care of these animals and the vets that are traveling to visit them. It’s a lot harder for them than it is on us.
Gerry:
Yeah. I wanted to turn the conversation for just a minute if we could, I mean, PASA is back to what PASA is and what PASA does. And I know that it’s sort of struggled over the years. I think while it has a value to the members, the 23 sanctuaries in Africa, the public hasn’t really known who and what you are.
Gregg:
Yeah. That the spotlight is definitely on the primates and the sanctuaries, and it should be; they’re the ones on the ground doing the gritty work all day. PASA, you know, I said that it started for communication among the sanctuaries, and over time it developed different roles. The time that I’ve been with Pasa, we’ve really refocused into two priority areas. One of them is building the capacity of our member sanctuaries, basically helping them to achieve their missions better. This includes conferences that, well, when there’s not a pandemic, we have conferences every year, trainings, workshops, a lot of work like that. And the other side of that is more conservation focused to create a cohesive movement to protect primates across Africa. You know, giving all these organizations a bigger voice.
Gregg:
You know, our members are generally focused on one country or even one small area within a country. And so as an alliance, we can really give them a much louder voice where we can make an impact across Africa. We can get more credibility from government officials and from big conservation organizations as an international alliance compared to as an organization providing direct support on the ground. I think this is really critical for the future of PASA. You know, the threats to African primates are so big. You’re dealing with issues like global wildlife trafficking crisis. We need a big movement to fight these threats. And so for PASA to become more and more relevant and to hopefully save some of these species from extinction, we need this bigger, more unified approach.
Gerry:
Are there any groups out there that are doing what you’re doing? None jump to mind. Are there any groups with this much pressure as there is on great apes and primates, and by extension their habitat, and it’s a habitat that in – in the case of Africa, I mean – we’re talking about the world’s second largest rainforest on the planet in the Congo Basin. So is there anyone else that’s really taking up that charge or is PASA the only one?
Gregg:
Well, around the world, there are other sanctuary associations in Europe, in Asia, in the U.S., but there isn’t anything like PASA in Africa, and I don’t want to put down our counterparts in other countries, in other continents, but PASA compared to other similar associations, it’s really more of an alliance, really more of bringing groups together with a common focus and providing a lot more direct support and capacity building. So I would say it’s a really unique association.
Gerry:
So do you see your role as PASA evolving as one that not only is there to support your members, but also can step out of that role and be the voice in places like Washington DC where policy is made or the places in Europe when policy is being made, I mean, do you see that as a growing role for PASA or a need?
Gregg:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll say when it comes to policies and similar areas, we always look to our members to let us know what their needs are and what their priorities are. I don’t wanna be that American guy in America who’s trying to decide what should happen in Africa. But, absolutely as PASA grows and becomes more focused on these bigger threats to primates, we’re acting as representatives of our members much more. For example, this morning I was at a CITES standing committee meeting. It was remote, everyone was doing it electronically, but it was from three to six in the morning here in Portland.
Gerry:
And for those who may not know, CITES is?
Gregg:
The Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. So essentially it’s a U.N. treaty that regulates trade in endangered species of animals and plants. And CITES can be really valuable through things like the flow of rhino horn from rhino range countries to Vietnam and China where it’s sold commercially, elephant ivory, tiger bones, and definitely primates as well, and many, many other species. I mean, CITES is the only thing – It’s the only agency that is regulating this on an international scale. You know, every country has their own wildlife authorities and trade departments, but CITES is the only one that acts as an umbrella worldwide. So, you know, PASA members are very unlikely to spend three hours in the middle of the night at a CITES meeting. But representing these sanctuaries across Africa, it’s a really important role for me to have.
Gerry:
How big a partner is CITES? I know that it’s pretty common in the conservation world to dump on CITES, and sometimes they deserve it. It’s frustrating. I mean, you hear these stories of briefcases full of CITES papers that are signed that can be sold to not even the highest bidder, just anybody with a hundred bucks can get one of them. And with one of them that is signed, you can ship a baby chimp out of a country and off to another country. And so CITES has come under a lot of criticism, but yet it is the only thing of its kind that we have to work with. Is that not right?
Gregg:
Yeah, absolutely. I agree that I think a lot of the criticism is warranted. It was set up to prevent trade and species from going to the extent that it would drive them to extinction. But CITES – it’s a trade, it’s a trade treaty. It’s not a conservation treaty, it’s not an animal welfare treaty. It’s about trade. It’s not about stopping trade, it’s about making sure that it’s sustainable. And so that’s one of the many limitations of CITES. Another one is that the enforcement of CITES is left to each individual country. Some countries are really stringent and conscientious – with other ones, like you said, anything goes. It’s easy to slip someone some money and get a signed CIS permit. And in the worst cases, CIS makes it easier to essentially launder wildlife.
Gerry:
Hmm. Yeah. No, no, go ahead. That’s just interesting. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely right. It does make it easier. Go ahead.
Gregg:
And without a CITES permit, someone might need to use a private plane to fly an animal to a different country or bribe some officials, or hide an animal in the bottom of a box full of some other kinds of materials. But if you have a fraudulent CITES permit, you just show that to everyone and you walk on the plane and it’s actually easier for you. One issue that we’ve been dealing with is the sale of chimpanzees from South Africa to China where they’re sold to zoos.
Gerry:
From South Africa?
Gregg:
From South Africa.
Gerry:
But there are no native chimps to South Africa.
Gregg:
Exactly. That’s what makes us all very suspicious. According to the paperwork including CITES documents – it was one or two years ago – 18 chimpanzees were sent from South Africa to China, and the paperwork said they were all bred in zoos. And other wildlife facilities in South Africa, the people I’ve talked to in South Africa had said they don’t know of any facilities that could breed that many chimps. So it seems far more likely that these chimps were smuggled from chimpanzee range countries in Central Africa down to South Africa just by land and trucks, going through probably dusty little border crossings where it’s relatively easy to bribe an official. And then once they’re in South Africa, they arrange some CITES permits. And if those permits say the animals are bred in South Africa, animals bred in captivity have less protection from CITES than animals that are born in the wild.
Gregg:
And so it suddenly makes everything else a lot easier. I mean, no one has found hard evidence of this, but like I said, people are very skeptical about these 18 chimps appearing that were all bred in captivity in South Africa. I don’t wanna dump on CITES too much, but one other challenge that we have is, when there’s a disease outbreak at a sanctuary, they often want to extend blood samples to a lab to identify the disease. And in a lot of African countries, there aren’t any labs that can perform the necessary tests, so they need to send the blood to another country, but blood of endangered species is protected by CITES. So I mean, there’s no commercial trade in chimpanzee blood, there’s no market for it, but they still might need to wait for a month for a CITES permit to send a blood sample to a lab to get it tested in order to treat the animal for the disease they have. So it can be frustrating. But on the other hand, as you said, there’s nothing like CITES. I mean, I still think the world’s a much better place with CITES than without it.
Gerry:
Yeah. That’s amazing. Maybe that’s one of the things we have to do here at the Talking Apes, is we need to get somebody on from CITES and walk them through it. That might be a trickier conversation. Maybe we should have a whole panel. We’ll have you and Ofir Drori who’s going to be with us on a future episode and a few others, and we’ll have you all on and grill the CITES spokespersons together.
Gregg:
We can all vent and let out our frustrations.
Gerry:
Yes, exactly. I wanted to ask you, running a non-profit can be a very frustrating experience, and especially running one like you’re running PASA because you’re running it, as you said, from afar. You’re not the one on the ground. What motivates you every day? What motivates you to do the work when, and especially during times like we’re experiencing now, where you don’t even have the joy of getting to go to Africa and visit the sanctuaries?
Gregg:
Yeah, that’s a really thoughtful question. My last couple jobs I was, you know, even though I was still doing administrative work all day, I could look out the window of my office and see the animals that we were rescuing and protecting. With PASA, it’s far more removed and halfway around the world from the animals. But in normal times, at least I get to travel a lot for work normally, and so that usually includes a couple trips a year to Africa. I always try to combine, maybe I go for a conference, visit a couple sanctuaries, meet with some officials, things like that. But it’s been tough lately. It can be hard to keep up the motivation especially when things are frustrating. But I would say for me, the successful rescues are really what keeps me going emotionally more than anything else.
Gregg:
I was saying earlier, the rescues can be really challenging, but also, for example, there were 20 monkeys from D.R. Congo that were stolen from the forest in various places. Whoever were the smugglers got fraudulent permits. They drove these animals across Zambia, into Zimbabwe, and they were stopped by government officials there. And as soon as we found out about this, we reached out to our member sanctuaries in D.R.C, because whenever possible we want to repatriate animals to their home countries, so they have a chance of being returned to the wild. J.A.C.K. Sanctuary agreed to take these monkeys, and then we spent four or five months just almost every day arguing with government officials trying to get better care for the monkeys and get the right permits and get approval from all these levels. So, finally, these 20 monkeys are now at J.A.C.K. Sanctuary living in big, beautiful enclosures. And knowing that we were a part of that, really, stories like that keep me going,
Gerry:
You used a word that I think a lot of people might not think of when it comes to wildlife and especially, you know, with great apes or primates, and that’s repatriation. We tend to think of that as something that applies to humans only. It’s an interesting point because there are countries that – it’s a wild, an exotic wild animal in that country. For example, there’s Chimfunshi in Zambia, and all of the chimpanzees, I think well over a hundred now that live there, 130 or plus, I guess those are all sort of expats, they’re all I think 19 countries in total.
Gregg:
To my knowledge, Chimfunshi is the only place on earth where there are all four chimpanzees. subspecies.
Gerry:
Exactly. Yeah. In some of the pieces that we’ve done for our Apes Like Us YouTube channel, filming there, I know that they have a chimp that came from Argentina who was like in a zoo or a circus from there. I mean, they’ve got chimps that aren’t just from the range countries in Africa. So, this idea that these animals would come into a country and if they’re confiscated and they weren’t from that country, they might, I mean, what happens to them? Do they end up in the local zoo? Do they end up being exported in some way? How does that all work?
Gregg:
Yeah. Prioritizing repatriation comes from CITES. It’s a CITES principle that when animals are confiscated, if it’s feasible to send them back to their home country, if their home country’s even known, that should be the priority. And so when possible we do that, a main reason being as much as possible, we’d like to see these animals reintroduced to the wild. And so if they’re in their home country, um, then we’re more confident that it will be successful and more confident that it will not be disturbing to the genetics of local populations. Obviously there’s species and subspecies and populations within that are each genetically distinct, but in many cases it’s just not feasible. That’s why it’s so valuable that sanctuaries that aren’t in range countries exist. Like, I’m just looking at chimpanzees.
Gregg:
There’s Chimfushi in Zambia, Sweetwaters in Kenya, Chimp Eden in South Africa, and they’re all in countries where there aren’t wild chimpanzees. They have a critical role because they are able to accept confiscated and rescued animals from all over the world. You know, most of the chimp sanctuaries that are in range countries are almost at capacity just with the confiscated animals from within their own countries. So they just don’t have the bandwidth to take in animals from Argentina, Iraq, France, wherever. This ties back to this alliance concept with PASA, where you have different members that are really diverse and they all have different roles. You know, some of them are focusing on one country, some of them rescuing animals from all over Africa and even further. And so by working together, it really makes us a lot stronger.
Gerry:
I think it really does illustrate the need for all of those sanctuaries. As you know, how we started this podcast off, we were talking about, is there really a need for 23 sanctuaries? And that I think helps illustrate the fact that yeah, there’s a need for them, not only a need for them, but there’s probably a need for two or three more if the funds were there to do so. I wanna pivot for just a moment if we can. Part of us starting this podcast Talking Apes was to have folks on like you and to create more awareness about what’s happening to primates and great apes, because it’s really shocking sometimes. I think you go out to talk to people, and I know you speak publicly, at how much people think they know, but really don’t know about, not only about the species themselves, like what is the difference between an orangutan and a chimp and a gorilla and a bonobo and so forth, but also what the issues are that they’re facing.
Gerry:
Palm oil I know is coming back to Africa in a big way, and we think of palm oil as being sort of a southeast Asia, Borneo, Sumatra issue, but oil palm originated in West Africa, Western Congo Basin as a plant, and it’s on its way back. And it could have devastating impacts on the Congo Basin and in turn on the species that live there, like many of the monkeys and the great apes that live there. So just becoming aware of what’s happening is sometimes equally as important because you have buying power. Much of the chocolate of the world comes from West Africa. Those are areas where levels of deforestation has a huge impact on the monkeys of that area.
Gregg:
Yeah, palm oil is one of my biggest worries. Until now, the biggest extractive industries have included mining and logging, which are absolutely devastating. If Africa starts to have these massive palm oil plantations like you see in Southeast Asia, it would really be a tragedy. The bushmeat trade is another issue that very few people worldwide realize. It’s arguably the biggest threat now to African primates. Most of it is within Africa, but also some of this bushmeat is smuggled worldwide to the US and elsewhere. So, raising awareness is a really essential role for you and for PASA.
Gerry:
Yeah, just take that one for example. I think it’s really important for people to understand that there’s multiple impacts to the bushmeat trade, and there’s multiple connections to it. A lot of these palm oil plantations, the deforestation that goes on in logging, they fuel the bushmeat trade as well, because a lot of those camps, the meat that the loggers and the palm oil workers and everything use is bushmeat. A lot of that trafficking is interconnected. And I think that’s why it’s, as I’m sure you have found in the work that you’re doing at PASA, that it’s part of the reason it’s so difficult to put a halt to any of this. It’s just not push one button and it all stops. That button is connected to a lot of other buttons, and trying to get one of them pushed is sometimes a challenge.
Gregg:
I mean, let’s say an African government approves a new mining operation, you think, well, okay, mining, that’s not good. But if that mining operation involves cutting a road through wilderness for miles and miles to get to it, yet it’s exposing wildlife populations that have never seen people before. There are areas that a hunter might have had to walk for days to get to before, and because of one road, they can just drive a few hours, shoot some animals, bring them into the truck and drive them back again. And, yeah, you’re right. All of these factors, it’s palm oil, hunting, logging, mining, international wildlife trade, It’s all interrelated. I mean, a lot of the – most of the apes that are rescued by PASA member sanctuaries are orphaned by the bushmeat trade. Their families are killed for meat and the babies are too small to be worth slaughtering for meat. So maybe they’re sold to somebody at a market and that person keeps it, maybe sells it to someone else. In some cases people will try to smuggle it to say a zoo in China or to an exotic animal collection in the Middle East. The animal might be confiscated at the airport or confiscated at a checkpoint, and then it will end up at a PASA member sanctuary. So all of these threats are interconnected and there’s no simple solutions.
Gerry:
I really appreciate you kind of going into that a little bit, because I think that’s something that a lot of people aren’t really aware of. Something else I wanted to ask you was, a lot of the sanctuaries depend on volunteers and donations, so what can people at home do to help out and help PASA help the sanctuaries and really have some impact on the survival of great apes and primates?
Gregg:
Oh, yeah, that’s a really essential question. I could say for PASA and our member sanctuaries, everything we do is only possible because of donations. You know, people around the world donate all sorts of amounts of money. And that’s a critical way for people to help, they can go to PASA.org and donate. Also following us on social media is a great way to get more informed about the issues facing primates and the work that sanctuaries are doing. You can find us at PASA Primates on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Even if donating isn’t feasible, you know, sharing posts with your friends is a really great way to raise awareness. As a small non-profit that is an umbrella for a lot of other small nonprofits, raising awareness is key. Even just talking to your friends and family about things like the bushmeat trade and wildlife trafficking, that is really important for bringing these issues more present in people’s minds. So everyone’s more motivated to take action.
Gerry:
Before I let you go today, I have one question I want to ask you. And that was, you’ve been in this job now for 6, 7, 8 years?
Gregg:
Six, six years.
Gerry:
Six years. So in those six years, is there one ape or primate that sort of captured your heart, captured your curiosity, your passion, that sort of, you know, when things are going less than perfect, sitting, sitting in Portland, Oregon and managing all of this, is there kind of one that you go, okay, that was worth taking this job, that was worth having that experience?
Gregg:
Yeah, I, hmm, I wouldn’t say there’s one individual, but a lot of the times I think about the most recent one that we helped to rescue, and that’s, you know, whether it’s a single chimpanzee where someone reached out to us about a chimp in a horrible situation and reached out to a sanctuary, or I gave that example of these 20 monkeys at the J.A.C.K sanctuary. Just thinking about the most recent animals where we directly gave that animal a much better life. We saved it from cruelty. I’m seeing pictures and videos of it climbing trees. So I wouldn’t say there’s one individual, but those rescues really keep me going.
Gerry:
Great. Well, Gregg, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re crazy busy with sitting in on CITES meetings and everything else that’s going on, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain what PASA is, what PASA is growing to be, and under your leadership it’s been amazing to watch. So thanks a lot for joining us.
Gregg:
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me on. You have such a valuable role here raising awareness about apes and ape conservation worldwide. We need a lot more work like what you’re doing.
Gerry:
Once again, I’d like to thank Gregg Tully for giving us some insight into the convoluted world of rescuing and saving great apes and primates in Africa. You’ve been listening to Talking Apes. For every episode, we explore the world of apes with experts for research to outreach with passionate primate people and conservationists from around the world. Our guests are at the forefront of news about our wild primate cousins.
