The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8540761.htm?1c

Posted on Wed, Apr. 28, 2004

Conservationists protect primates in South Carolina

By BRUCE SMITH
Associated Press

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. - Passing through the gate of the International 
Primate Protection League sanctuary, you sense you have taken a wrong 
turn and mistakenly arrived on another continent.

The songs of gibbons rise on the morning air, and Shirley McGreal 
greets you with her British accent. It is here in a pine glen in rural 
South Carolina that McGreal has, for more than a quarter century, 
supervised a worldwide effort to protect primates.

She founded the International Primate Protection League even earlier - 
in Thailand 30 years ago - to protect threatened primates including 
gibbons, monkeys and gorillas. Much of the league's work is directed at 
fighting illegal trafficking of the animals.

The league's almost 10-acre compound with its cages and runs is home to 
33 gibbons - some in their late 40s and many brought here after living 
years in medical labs.

McGreal, who has a doctorate in education, had planned to become a 
college professor.

Despite having no experience with primates, she decided she needed to 
do something when, in the early 1970s, she saw gibbons, monkeys and 
other primates crated for shipping at the Bangkok Airport and for sale 
at a market in the city.

"I was really self-taught, although I had seen animals in zoos and 
everything. I normally would have become a college teacher," she says. 
"It's amazing I got out of the area and started a totally new life."

That life has resulted in a worldwide organization with 15,000 members 
and field representatives in 31 nations working to preserve parks and 
sanctuaries for primates and for laws to ban trafficking in the 
animals.

One of the league's early accomplishments was working with Thai 
students in the mid-1970s to document the shipping of primates from 
Bangkok Airport - work that resulted in that nation banning primate 
exports.

In subsequent years the league helped work for a ban on the export of 
Rhesus monkeys from India and the seizure of chimps on sale in pet 
shops in Saudi Arabia.

When the league celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, Prince 
Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, sent a letter of commendation.

"The League can look back with much pride on its very considerable 
achievements ... most primate populations around the globe are in a 
better state thanks to its activities," he wrote.

All this from just a desire to make a difference.

"When I was starting, I was obviously a nobody," recalls McGreal. She 
had no background in biology or wildlife but did read a book titled 
"The Apes" by Oxford University professor Vernon Reynolds.

So she wrote to tell him about the organization she envisioned.

"He could have done two things. He could have written back and said, 
'I've never heard of you. Who the hell are you?' Or he could have said 
'How can I help?'" McGreal says.

Reynolds offered his help and has been helping since, she recounts as 
she walks through the sanctuary.

"For every animal we care for here, we care for 100 overseas" by 
supporting other groups and sanctuaries, she adds.

"A lot of it we had to figure out. Some of it we read. But there has 
been no 'Jane Goodall' of the gibbons," says McGreal, referring to the 
internationally known primate scientist. "There haven't been these 
30-year studies of gibbons."

The compound has cages with enclosed runs overhead, allowing the 
gibbons to move around during the day. The weather in South Carolina is 
not too different from Asia.

"It's very nice. They do have some chilly weather (in Asia), and 
gibbons live up to 5,000 feet," she says.

The sanctuary's white-handed gibbons perhaps resemble humans more 
closely than other primates, McGreal says. They live in family units 
and like to sleep in the same place every night. They are territorial, 
and families must be kept in separate runs and cages.

But unlike many humans, gibbons mate for life and, when their offspring 
get old enough, they push them out to start their own lives. And, also 
unlike humans, there seems to be little racial bias.

"No black gibbon would refuse to play with another color gibbon. They 
look behind the color of the gibbon to the inner gibbon," McGreal 
laughs.

The sanctuary animals consume about 1,000 pounds of food a month, 
largely fresh fruit and vegetables as well as bamboo from bamboo stands 
on the property.

After 30 years, McGreal says the league has had its successes but more 
remains to be done.

"The primate trade is really rampant," she says. "It was really bad 30 
years ago, then it really dipped in the monkey trade particularly. Then 
four or five years ago when all this stuff about biowarfare got hot, 
the demand for monkeys has gotten enormous. They want to study Ebola 
and anthrax and you name it."

McGreal also worries that crates used to ship animals could provide a 
vehicle for terrorist attacks.

"I've always said this huge and burgeoning trade in live animal traffic 
is a way," she says. "Animal crates are not inspected. Something like a 
spitting cobra - what customs agent is going to inspect a spitting 
cobra?"