: Karen,: Please accept my sincere apology. I obviously did not give you the benefit of the doubt, and I made certain broad assumptions about your intentions. I do not feel it was entirely without reason, though, since you did not clarify any of the above in your earlier post. In that sense, I am glad to have gotten this out in the open, because I know if I misinterpreted your intentions, then so did many others. Presumably many people also figured you were a zoo lover and supporter and that you saw nothing wrong with that. Many, many people support zoos and their "cause", and zoos themselves flaunt themselves as ardent animal right-ers. I am glad that is cleared up. Sorry again.
Appology thankfully accepted! I got a good impression of you from your posts and sure didn't want to be on your s--- list. I'm just so happy with the apes, it's hard for me to imagine people who actually want to hurt them, so I didn't stop to think that my post would be misinterpreted, sorry about the mix up. You have given me good cause for thought though. What are your thoughts on donating $ for gorillas to have a better enclosure? I know it's helping the zoo, but I can't help wanting Casey, Gordy, Schroader & Togo (our gorillas here) to have a much better area which is being planned and funds are being raised for. The area they are in now is too small, cement, and fake trees. They only get buckets for toys and hey & very occasional snacks during zoo hours. This must really suck, since in the wild they forage all day long. I don't want to support the zoo concept but I also don't want the animals to die of boredom. What to do? I assure you, if I were in Africa I'd be just as ballistic as Dian Fossey to protect them.
: Do you know much about the orangs in Borneo? (I know only what I read in that book I mentioned, "The Follow" by Linda Spalding.) From what I understand the research around them is governed mostly by politics, not by an interest in protecting their habitat and freedom. As I understand it, they are becoming more or less domesticated and now many do not know how to survive in their environment without human assistance. Any thoughts?
Birute Gildakas is one of the 3 ape ladies found by the infamous Louis Leakey. (Dian Fossey & Jane Goodall are the 2 others)Birute founded Orangutan Foundation International(OFI) to help orangutans in Borneo. She has studied them for about 30 years. She wrote an excellent book about her experiences- Reflections of Eden. She began taking captive orangutans "pets" from people and re-introducing them to the wild. She and other ape rehabers find that most often it is not fully successful because they lost that valuable time with their mothers when they would have learned how to forage. So they depend on the rehab center for food, especially now with the fires costing so much habitat. I hope to take the tour of this Camp Leakey for my college field study. It is a huge problem when these animals are habituated too much. I read that one of Dian Fosseys study groups got used to people and interacting when they were small and now that they are 200 to 450 pounds they still think they can sit on your lap!!Yikes. Also there are concerns that when they are so comfy with humans this makes them much more vulnerable to poachers. I've read about other rehab centers being treated more like petting zoo's for $ than about rehabituating them to the rainforest.
I found that alot of zoos are supplying animals for canned hunts! Thankfully not mine. Busch Gardens, SanFran zoo, San Diego zoo, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, St.Louis, Oklahoma City, Buffalo NY, Kansas City, San Antonio, National Zoo DC--to name a few. Most of the zoo gorillas were not taken from the wild at least.
