Saving the Gorillas (aka charismatic megafauna)

A few weeks ago, my journal club at work read about the plight of the Gorillas - apparently, as if habitat devastation and trophy hunting weren't enough, the Ebola virus is wiping out the scattered groups across western Africa, which has caused the ICUN to list the western lowland gorilla as critically endangered. What does this mean? Well, technically, it means that gorillas have undergone a population reduction on the order of 80 - 90% over the past ten years, and is at extremely high risk for extinction (click here for a detailed description of the ICUN classifications). What it means in human terms is that your children will never see a gorilla in the wild.

As a bunch of anthropologists, primatologists and the like, we worried about the gorillas and wondered what we could do. After all, Ebola is still a major health issue in humans, and many have documented the horrors of the virus. Shouldn't we do something to save our close relatives, the gentle, intelligent giants?

We were all on board, until the devil's advocate in the group mentioned that as a whole, great apes have been declining since their heyday in the Miocene (which ended some five million years ago). Outside of humans, apes are confined to areas of relatively heavy, tropical forest in only a few areas of the world, and only a handful of ape species are alive today, compared with hundreds of extinct species. They are not adapted to today's environments and have not been a terribly successful group (excepting us). Clearly, then, apes are already on the decline, why should we bother to save them?

The answer, as I see it, is a case of Charismatic Megafauna. Gorillas, and apes in general, have a great deal of appeal for most people. The environments they inhabit are rare and unique, and undoubtedly the homes to a wide variety of other species ofbirds, plants, insects and other invertebrates, not to mention the cute and furries. But despite studies of these groups it's a lot harder to motivate the masses to give money to save bugs than it is to get money for gorillas. So by keeping these ideal poster children alive, we are giving everything else that lives in the same environment a bit more of a fighting chance at survival, too.