The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love by Goodall Jane & Bekoff Marc

Author:Goodall, Jane & Bekoff, Marc [Goodall, Jane & Bekoff, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, Philosophy
ISBN: 9780062316790
Amazon: 0062316796
Goodreads: 18170034
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: 2002-10-08T07:00:00+00:00

INTERVENTION—OR HELPING?

Often during our long-term study at Gombe, which began in 1960, we have cured, or tried to cure, sick chimpanzees and baboons. We routinely administered antibiotics when the chimpanzees or baboons whom we were studying developed bad infections, and when it seemed necessary, individuals were given medication for deworming. In 1966 an epidemic of what was almost certainly polio broke out among the chimpanzees in the park. Once we realized what was going on, we acquired some oral vaccine and started all of our chimpanzees on a three-week course, putting drops into bananas. Another time the adult female Gilka developed a strange fungus infection that caused her nose, brow ridge, and eyelids to swell grotesquely. We anaesthetized her, performed a biopsy, and then administered medication that helped to reduce the horrible swelling. When Goblin developed two scrotal abscesses, a veterinarian darted him, lanced the wounds, and administered a massive dose of antibiotics. Loretta was darted too when we found her with a poacher’s snare pulled cruelly around one hand. Her hand was so gangrenous it was necessary to amputate. When the baboons of Gombe became infected with a syphilis-like venereal disease, we were advised that only massive doses of penicillin would cure the condition. In an incredible veterinary operation, the baboons of three troops (about 150 individuals) were anaesthetized and treated—with no loss of life.

At almost every lecture I am asked a question about interventions of this sort. There are those who feel that we should not “interfere with nature.” But we have already interfered greatly with nature, and many of the problems we are treating would not have occurred if the chimps and baboons were not living so close to humans. We can make the argument that every chimpanzee is precious, from a purely genetic point of view, because there are only some 120 chimpanzees within the park and they are now isolated from remnant groups outside. In the old days chimpanzee females moved into the Gombe communities from outside the park. Today the tiny, thirty-square-mile Gombe National Park is surrounded by farmland from which all the forests—and the chimpanzees—have gone.

Resident veterinarians are attached to many of the sites where the great apes are being studied including, now, at Gombe. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas are all susceptible to human infectious diseases. They are all endangered, and every individual is precious in terms of a diminishing gene pool. But it was not so in the early 1960s, when I began my observations. Chimp habitat stretched right along the shores of Lake Tanganyika and inland east of the rift escarpment. Yet even then I tried to treat the chimpanzees whenever possible. On purely humanitarian grounds. Just as I have always tried to help any suffering animal. We humans cause such massive interference, such great pain, to so many millions of animals. The least we can do is to help when we can—provided we are as sure as possible that our help will not lead to problems of another sort, as

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