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[Benjamin Bayliss <ctrkgrendel AT yahoo.com>]

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/01/18/sue.html
   
  Court says former OSU monkeys, chimps can't sue
  
  Friday,  January 18, 2008 8:41 AM 
    


  
  SAN ANTONIO (AP) --  A Texas appeals court has affirmed a lower court 
decision that nine chimpanzees and monkeys that were brought to the Primarily 
Primates sanctuary in 2006 don't have a legal right to sue.   
   
  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had sought to gain legal 
standing for the primates transferred from Ohio State University to the 
sanctuary after they were retired. PETA alleged that the sanctuary conditions 
were substandard and that it would be best for the seven chimps and two 
monkeys to be moved to another sanctuary.
   
  The animals were later moved to the Chimp Haven sanctuary in Louisiana 
after the Texas attorney general placed Primarily Primates in receivership 
for six months. Primarily Primates, which has since restructured its board, 
is suing to have the animals returned.
  The 4th Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the lower court decision 
dismissing the case in September 2006.
   
  PETA said it was considering whether to appeal.
   
  “The receiver's report of the substandard facilities at Primarily Primates, 
Inc. (PPI), described horrific conditions for the animals there, from which 
some of the animals were saved as a result of litigation,” PETA said in a 
statement.
   
  Priscilla Feral, chairwoman of a restructured Primarily Primates board, 
applauded the ruling.
  “We are glad that this wrong-headed lawsuit which PETA filed against a 
sanctuary is finally over and we can get on with bettering the lives of each 
and every animal under our care,” she said. 



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>From josh.greenman AT gmail.com  Fri Jan 25 12:04:36 2008
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Subject: [monkeywire] Great Apes Endangered By Human Viruses
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080125100320.htm

Great Apes Endangered By Human Viruses

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2008) =97 The opening of gorillas and chimpanzees
reserves for tourism is often portrayed as the key to conserving these
endangered great apes. There are also however serious concerns that
tourism may expose wild apes to infection by virulent human diseases.

Commercial hunting and habitat loss are major drivers of the rapid
decline of great apes, the researchers said. Ecotourism and research
have been widely promoted as a means of providing alternative value
for apes and their habitats. While close contact between humans and
habituated apes has raised concerns about disease transmission,
previous studies had only demonstrated the spread of relatively mild
bacterial and parasitic infections from humans to wild apes.

A new study by researchers of the Robert Koch Institute (Berlin), the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) and the
Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques (Ivory Coast) confirms the
disease threat, finding the first direct evidence of virus
transmission from humans to wild apes. The study also showed however
that research and tourism projects strongly suppressed the poaching of
chimpanzees. This protective effect outweighed the substantial
chimpanzee mortality caused by human disease introduction.

Respiratory disease introduction by humans has long been suspected at
sites where apes in the wild have been in close contact to humans but
this is the first study to diagnose the disease agent and quantify the
population impact. "We need to be much more proactive about
instituting strict hygiene precautions at all ape tourism and research
sites", says Fabian Leendertz, senior author of the paper and a
wildlife disease epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in
Berlin. "One possibility for promoting compliance is a certification
process similar to the green labelling system now used in the timber
industry."

The study used a multidisciplinary approach involving behavioural
ecology, veterinary medicine, virology and population biology to track
human disease introduction into two chimpanzee communities at Ta=EF
National Park in C=F4te d'Ivoire, where researchers first began to
habituate chimpanzees to human presence in 1982. Tissue samples taken
from chimpanzees that had died in a series of outbreaks dating back to
1999 tested positive for two human respiratory viruses that are major
sources of human infant mortality in the developing world, namely
human respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus.

Viral strains sampled from the chimpanzees were closely related to
pandemic strains concurrently circulating in human populations as far
away as China and Argentina, suggesting recent introduction from
humans into the chimpanzees. The authors also used clinical
observations and demographic analyses to infer that similar
respiratory outbreaks could date as far back as 1986.

The research project has however also had strongly positive effects.
Longitudinal surveys showed that the presence of researchers had
suppressed poaching activities in the surrounding area. Consequently,
chimpanzee densities at both the research study site and a nearby
chimpanzee tourism site were much higher than would be expected given
their accessibility to poachers. "Researcher presence is confirmed to
have a major positive impact on the protection of an area," says
co-author Christophe Boesch of the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, who directs the
research project at Ta=EF. "However, it comes with some hygienic
problems which need to be addressed."

"The study confirms that multidisciplinary research is needed to
investigate different issues involved in ape conservation", said Paul
N'Goran, a researcher at the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques
en C=F4te d'Ivoire. "Our study shows the critical role that scientific
research can play in monitoring the impact and effectiveness of
conservation strategies."

Journal reference: Sophie K=F6ndgen, Hjalmar K=FChl, Paul K. N'Goran,
Peter D. Walsh, Svenja Schenk, Nancy Ernst, Roman Biek, Pierre
Formenty, Kerstin M=E4tz-Rensing, Brunhilde Schweiger, Sandra Junglen,
Heinz Ellerbrok, Andreas Nitsche, Thomas Briese, W. Ian Lipkin, Georg
Pauli, Christophe Boesch, and Fabian H. Leendertz. Pandemic Human
Viruses Cause Decline of Endangered Great Apes. Current Biology,
January 2008

Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.