Primate Hell

It had been my plan to totally switch gears and report on some newly identified co-inhabitants of our shrinking blue planet, including a legless lizard, a Borneo fox and a new species of mouse lemur, Microcebus macarthurii, named for the foundation which funded the research into these svelte Madagascar petits (photo by Dr. Blanchard Randrianambinina). In eastern Ecuador, 7 new species of Glassfrogs have been found. but like nearly all these new discoveries - mostly occurring in the tropics, i.e. RAINFORESTS - habitat loss is growing by the day and unless humans ship out to colonize Mars sooner rather than later, biologists aren't all that optimistic about how much longer into the future many of these creatures will survive. Every new species comes with increasingly frantic calls for habitat conservation.

Another spectacular novelty is a newly identified species of manta ray, found in Mozambiquan waters. Here's a super cool photo taken by Andrea Mitchell, an aussie doing her PhD research down there. These animals are certainly otherworldly enough to satisfy my sci-fi challenged imagination. The main threats to their survival are reportedly sharks, the asian medicinal industry and getting caught in seine nets, though not necessarily in that order. Elasmobranchii species feeding on each other may represent a sort of fundamentalist inter-special approach to survival of the fittest, but nothing Mother Nature's delivered on her own has come close to the destruction power of Homo sapiens sapiens. i have nothing against natural remedies and i've always loved my acupuncturists, but with so many of us and so very few of them, can't we find some chamomile blend that will offer up the same health benefits?

As i said, i'd planned to do a "New Non-Voter Roster" or something clever like that with these nocto-marino-primatological species types, but after reading about the crisis in Congo, i just couldn't bring myself to being completely light and airheady. According to lastest reports, dozens of park rangers from Virungi are still missing after the lot of them had to flee from the crossfire between Congolese (DRC) troops and (presumably) Nkunde's crazed hooligan soldados. This is the largest silverback gorilla reserve in Africa, in terms of sq kilometers, and they are now are greater risk than before. The rebels have reportedly taken over the park now.

This is from a year before, thought to be the act of Goma charcoal gangs:

If quasi-local poachers were doing this when there were park rangers around working to protect the gorillas, what should we expect to happen now that these protectors have fled? Can someone tell me what this war is the Congo is really about? What the purpose is? Just a bunch of wild men using territorial conquest as a reason to rape and pillage; the Tutsi position of protecting themselves from Hutu extremists doesn't cut water, given the extremism of Nkunde's forces. Yet even if there was a political justification, do they really need to be disturbing a primate reserve??? There doesn't seem much point in trying to take over territory whose value is destroyed in the process. But i'm sure they don't look at it that way. i'm a member of the vanishing eco-anarcho-liberal species, crying over dead gorillas - for god's sake! Primate hell, no matter which lens we apply.