The Great Ape Project
It is now three years since The Great Ape Project was launched
in London, simultaneously with the publication of the book, The Great
Ape Project, edited by myself and Paola Cavalieri. In that time, our
ideas have reached many millions of people around the world. The book itself
has been published in both Britain and the United States, and is still
in print in both editions. It has also been translated into German and
Italian, and published in those countries, and a Spanish translation is
in progress. But far more people have heard of the project, through newspaper
articles in dozens of countries, and through television coverage. In the
United States, The Great Ape Project was featured in the prime-time ABC
network current affairs program 20/20, in an episode that brought
a deluge of mail, and eventually led to the release of Booee and eight
other chimpanzees from a laboratory. A version of the same program was
shown on Australia’s top-rating national current affairs program. In Britain,
Channel 4 made a program, The Great Ape Trial, specifically about
the idea of whether the law should be changed to grant great apes rights,
and the program’s “jury” voted by a margin of 5 to 1 that it should. It
seems that the public was ripe for a discussion of the moral status of
the nonhuman great apes, and The Great Ape Project has been a catalyst
for getting the idea of rights for the great apes into the mainstream.
Meanwhile, after a slow start, the international organisation has been growing too. There are national co-ordinators of The Great Ape Project in Britain, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. It gained a boost in the United States when the last day of the World Congress for Animals, attended by 2500 people in Washington, DC, was devoted entirely to the theme of The Great Ape Project. Speakers included Jane Goodall, Roger and Deborah Fouts, myself, and lawyers Steve Ann Chambers and Steven Wise. The Great Ape Project also brought Karl Ammann from Kenya to speak on the killing of gorillas and chimpanzees for food. Hundreds of attendees signed up to support the project. The Great Ape Project now has a modest office and a part-time employee, in Oregon, USA.
While spreading the ideas behind The Great Ape Project has been our first priority, and building the organisation has had to come next, there have also been practical activities that have already helped specific apes. In particular, as already mentioned, and described elsewhere in this newsletter, Booee and his companions from New York’s LEMSIP laboratory are now in a sanctuary, an outcome that flowed directly from the ABC-TV program that used his plight — and his capacity to use sign language to show that he remembered Roger Fouts after 16 years of separation — to exemplify the ideas of The Great Ape Project. The Great Ape Project has also supported the efforts of another organisation, Primarily Primates, to provide a sanctuary for a different group of chimpanzees, known as the Buckshire chimpanzees. They too have now escaped dreadful conditions and are in a sanctuary where they have much more space than before and are safe from experimentation. In Taiwan, we have worked to save orang-utans who were smuggled into the country illegally as babies, in order to make cute pets, and then abandoned when they became too big and strong to be kept in a house. We are seeking to have these orang-utans repatriated to the jungles from which they came, or if that is not possible, to be released into sanctuaries with adequate room for them to roam. In Africa, we are working with Karl Ammann and others to find ways of stopping the “bushmeat” trade.
All of this work is a way of preparing the ground for the steps that will bring the great apes within the community of equals — that basic community of beings who recognise each other as having fundamental rights, including the rights to life, liberty and protection from torture. How this historic breach in the species barrier will occur is something that we do not yet know, but we must be prepared to try all the avenues open to us. In the United States, we are joining with lawyers who are expert in the field of law relating to animals, to investigate ways of bringing a case on behalf of a nonhuman great ape. In other countries, we have been talking to members of parliament. While we are all impatient for change, we have to realise that in Western society, at least, the species barrier has been in place for millennia, and any attempt to breach it will need to be very well prepared indeed if it is to have any chance of success.
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GAP NEWSLETTERS International and National Editions This is the first newsletter of The Great Ape Project–International. You may have previously received newsletters from national sections of The Great Ape Project. From now on, the main newsletter will be an international edition. National sections may continue to send out newsletters or bulletins as appropriate. There will be some overlap with national editions at first. |
Ideas Send us your ideas, pictures and articles for the newsletter. We also need reports of personal encounters with nonhuman great apes (captive or free living) for a Readers’ Column in newsletters, and perhaps for use on the GAP–International Web Site. |