Conservation and Local People

I’ve done a lot of my work outside protected areas; it’s simply a fact of life that there just aren’t enough protected areas to contain all the animals.  So, we go to them.  Laikipia District was not protected; though Segera Ranch (http://www.zeitzfoundation.org/) was particularly conservation oriented, the communally owned areas where quite overgrazed.

I’m a firm believer that you can’t just fence in an area and expect things to go well- just look at the example of Tana River Kenya.  You need the cooperation and involvement of the local people.  Really, you need their lives to improve in some way by helping these efforts.

Tangkoko, where I work now, is a protected area, but people still go through it and are permitted to fish off the park.  There is also illegal activity, and this is sometimes how our monkeys get caught in snares (we pull any snares we find and GPS map them).  There is also a thriving ecotourism business set up around the monkeys (this has some potential issues to, which is why we supposedly have two tourist groups, with our other groups protected by the Wildlife Service here- no tourists, except poorly obeyed and enforced- that’s a whole other thing I won’t post about)..

So, people have not lost the use of the area, not entirely.  But, oh the downside…the pictures below will tell you why I wish the park was a bit more closed, though I know that would likely cause problems.

   

Fishermen throw their trash- food wrapper, bottle, shoes- all along the beach.  Here’s my highly endangered monkeys foraging amongst the trash.  Being exposed to who knows what human pathogens that they are susceptible to, and eating things that may be quite bad for them (the male below is eating powdered milk).

This is why us crazy scientists want to keep people out of protected areas. 

How do we resolve this kind of issue?  Well, I am becoming very tempted to 1) show these pictures to local people, as part of an outreach program (in which the harm to the monkeys is explained) and 2) to organize some kind of trash clean up. 

The Best Laid Plans of Fieldworkers...

...they often go awry

My supervisor helped me arrange a great schedule where I had 3.5 days of assistant help in the group I really needed to be in.  And then things started happening.

First, we got this arranged exactly as three concurrently consorting females deflated (stopped consorting).  Ok, that gave me a couple days to better learn individual ids in that group and do this urine collection test.  Then, we had a female start consorting.  Of course right before off days, but I got a few days of good preliminary data.

Oh, and I got sick right before off days; I barely made it through the last day, and wouldn’t have without coming in while the animals were near camp at lunch time.  Had a coke and a short rest, managed the rest of day.  Was just so tired and weak feeling, thought I was just tied from the week.  Sleep most of my first day off (we do 5 days on, 2 off).

Uh-huh…until I went out after my off days.  My stomach was a bit upset the second day off, but I thought I’d accidentely eaten something with dairy (turns out those hazelnut/chocolate spreads have milk, whoops) and it wasn’t bad.  Of course our insane animals went straight for one of the worst areas.  And I was starting to realize I was not ok, and feeling all weak and woozy.  Which is a fabulous thing to realize when you are deep  into the scrubbiest nastiest part of the home range, and rather far from home.  My female wasn’t even consorting, so I really had little to lose that day anyhow (I pushed through the last day since I was getting good preliminary data).  I decided I’d better go in before I got worse, and it took me over an hour…I hate the scrub and really wish this group spent less time in the secondary forest.  I’ve been home ever since and am going to the doctor tomorrow in Manado, though I think I am getting better.

That’s not all: we have another juvenile with a snare and we’re at three failed darting days.  So, that is taking time and assistants (ie, I’m not working on my own stuff since this has priority).  Until we catch this kid and get him unsnared, the whole schedule is messed up.  We try again Tuesday and I really hope we succeed, both for our schedules and this poor kid, who will likely die without our intervention and still may lose a hand.

Plus some logistic things: all the assistants go to Manado tomorrow for a vaccine, so no monkey work (no darting attempt for example).

I should have what I need from this preliminary field season though, I’d just really like a couple more days data.  Fortunately, one of the popular females is already starting to consort (heh, she’s sterile, but the males love her…her swelling is smallish, but already got interest).

QED: Nothing ever goes as planned with field work and you’ve got to roll with the punches.

We don’t interfere with our study animals…except when we do

For me, ethic #1 of field work is that by studying and habituating a group of animals we have a responsibility to them.  We are making them vulnerable to other humans; we should never just leave a habituated group behind.  You can (and should) dishabituate groups if a study is being abandoned.  You are responsible for ensuring your actions do not negatively effect the animals.  I think you also have some responsibility towards conservation, education, and working with local people, especially on any conflicts with your study animals.

Now that responsibility doesn’t mean we treat them like pets, or take care of them (ie, day t day needs).  We generally just let life happen…we especially do not interfere in natural injuries, sickness, and death.  It just isn’t our place, and it changes the very things we set out to study. 

Except, sometimes we do interfere.  By we, I mean primatologists in general and sites I have worked at in specific.  When do we interfere with the animals we study?  I’d say many sites interfere when an injury is related to humans: we release trapped animals, treat snare wounds, help juveniles out of wells.  A couple of days ago, one of our juveniles had a snare around his wrist; left as is, he would have certainly lost the hand, possibly died.  We darted him and removed the snare (if we got him in time, he will recover, though he could still lose the hand or die- we have the infamous Peanut of the BBC documentary made here who lost part of his arm from a snare living same group).  On the other hand, we recently had a juvenile monkey from one of our groups dying, from natural causes- he was injured, most likely by another monkey.  The protocol is to do nothing, just collect the body when he dies- this took almost 3 days, 3 days of him laying on the forest floor becoming covered in maggots, unable to move (but alive).  Never have I missed hyenas so much (an animal in this condition would not last the first night, and it would be a mercy- we lack large predators here).    

Now, another detail: I’m working on a highly endangered species (there are something like 5,500 of these monkeys total in the world).  Does that make a difference?  Baboons aren’t endangered, and we still interfered in human caused issues.

Why is the former a special case?  I often have heard human caused treated separately from “natural” causes, to justify our interference.  But, really…aren’t humans part of the natural world?  C’mon, we’re not that special.  After all, we have coevolved with nonhuman primates for millions of years…are these interactions really new things?   Perhaps we feel a moral imperative to interfere with humans?  But, ethically, what should we do?  If we consider that by habituating the animals in the first place, we have made them more vulnerable to such human influence by reducing their fear of humans, perhaps we do.  For me, this is the main reason to justify interference when humans are involved.

How is this not effecting our studies?  I know of one site where the solution to that was to treat the rescued animal as dead in analysis.  That’s a solution I find impossible to actually carry out- that animal interacts with the rest, mates, sires offspring.  You may not be analyzing that animal, but the rest you study are effected.  I’m not really sure how you handle that one.  I do know that the effect on our data is (or should be) at most a minor consideration in the ethics of the situation.

A Monkey’s Eye View

We have a professional wildlife photographer working with Selemat Yaki, a conservation organization based on Manado, visiting Tangkoko for a couple of days.  He is trying to take pictures of the macaques in trees by getting up nearby trees himself.  After a long morning of searching for one of our groups, I went out with him to find a good tree near camp to practice on, partly since I was curious as both a primatologist and an amateur photographer.  I gave it a try myself, though only 2-3 meters off the ground, just past the super big roots of the rao tree- since he’s only got one harness and I have no experience, not smart or safe for me to go out of reach (unfortunately- no second harness means our experienced climber can’t come up and help you if there’s a problem).  (ok, no one freak out- Mom- I’m being careful and only did under supervision of an experienced climber).

Launching the first rope to get your strong climbing rope up is the hard part; the climbing itself isn’t too bad, mostly using your legs (leg strap and ascending clip- lift leg and move clip, then pull you body up by standing again).  Apparently arborists and forestry workers use these techniques.

Even just getting up that short distance was amazing.  The thing about this habitat is that the monkeys really live in a three dimensional world, in a way we really can’t appreciate.  Everything looks different from even a bit off the ground.  The way the light filters down is different, the colors are so vibrant- it’s beautiful and I really want to get higher, even without monkeys nearby (I am not crazy enough to try near animals without proper climbing training anyhow).  I’m going to try and find a course to learn this myself so I can do this when I come back.  I’d love to, oh say, go up by one of the tarsier sleep trees right when they are coming out and watch (and photograph!).  I’d have to get my supervisor’s permission to do near our animals, but oh man would that be cool!  Even if I don’t do near our study animals, plenty of wildlife to see and a nice view!

Identifying Individuals and Instinct

One of the first things anyone studying primate behavior has to do is learn to identify individuals (at least adults) in their groups.  In addition to getting some preliminary data and figuring out my data collection protocol, I am spending time on this- it’s rather hard to get even preliminary data without doing so.  Now, if you’ve seen my pictures you know that my new species, the crested black macaque is…well, BLACK.  As in all black in color, even their faces.  The only exception is that they look a little grey in spots (depending on light, ha) and their genitals (pink butts, pink to bright red genitals for the males especially).  Ok, now remember…I am now working in a forest environment, in other words much less light.  This means it is hard to see little things like scars…one of our males is missing an eye and I can’t always see that!  On the other hand, olive baboons are brown and their color varies quite a bit- this was something I used to id.  Plus, you know- bright sunlight, no canopy.

Meet Raja

Meet Tarzan...I swear this is a different animal 

Oh, and these macaques basically don’t have tails- they have these little tail nubs, not distinctive except for a couple whose tails lean to one side.  And you guessed it, tails were a feature I keyed in on in the baboons.  Baboons are pretty nasty to each other, so tails would have all sorts of break, missing hair, etc.  Not to mention extensive regular variation.

My usual procedure for learning ids is to use little oddities, scars, etc.  You’ve got to learn what is typical of the species and where the variation is- if everyone has a crease in a certain spot, it’s not gonna help.  I slowly learn to discriminate between the animals, and eventually get fast.  And around that time I start recognizing individuals like you do other humans- you just know them.  One day you see someone run by, look over, and you KNOW who it is- it’s instinct.

Basically, these guys are tough to learn, certainly harder than olive baboons.  I‘m really glad I have some previous experience.  Seriously, check out the pictures here- basically, I’m trying to learn these guys from every angle, and that means front, back (ie, butt), side).  So, yeah, those butts look different to me, but it takes some time.  And well...the males genitals vary a lot- so much so that this is a research topic of the project.  So, yeah...I'm using that, feel free to laugh at that, I do. 

I had a point where some things just clicked the other day and I started figuring some things out.  First, I started seeing some subtle differences I’d not been seeing- those pink things on the rear (sitting pads), they look different.

I swear, these are different animals...

And I realized that the combination of species (color, etc) and habitat make my usual routine not so helpful.  That routine works for me because I can start by logically thinking through ids, basically eliminating individuals until I get the right one.  I’m not a person who does things instinctively naturally; I am methodical and logical.  So, I’m trying to make myself just go for it- to have those telltale features, but then to just try to learn the animal as an individual.  Which means I’m trying to just look at an animal, not focusing on little scratches, but the individual themselves, and go with my instinct.  Rinse and repeat, and be grateful for our field assistants (who are probably scratching their heads trying to figure out how I can id someone one minute and not the next at the moment).  Basically, I’m forcing myself to go with my instinct and practicing until I can get it right.  I'm not spending lots of time trying to decide, you know, making sure I am right by going after the animal and checking for a scar, etc.  So, we’ll see…