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GACA
May 13, 1999
The Honorable Anna Eshoo
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Representative Eshoo,
I am writing to urge your support for an important bill recently introduced by Senator Jim Jeffords.
The Great Ape Conservation Act (S. 1007) is the first serious attempt to stop a crisis that, left unchecked, will have global and epoch-shaping ramifications. Gorillas and chimpanzees are being hunted to the very brink of extinction. The pace of eradication is accelerating, as foreign logging companies eager to maximize their harvest in countries where the trade is virtually unregulated carve access roads deep into primitive forests. The companies even pay hunters to feed their crews with the flesh of great apes and monkeys. On the new roads, hunters have unmitigated access to family groups of gorillas and chimpanzees that have not yet learned to fear them.
If we allow this to continue, these great apes will be eradicated within 30 years. Our DNA differs from that of chimpanzees and gorillas by less than 2%. We share the same blood groups. What keys to our own physiology and immunology will we destroy when we allow the last great apes to be killed? They will certainly take with them all practical hope for fully understanding the evolution and development of the AIDS virus, and for unlocking the secret of the chimpanzees' apparent resistance to it. If we permit the extinction of the great apes, we will extinguish a source of critical insights into our own past and the ways it has shaped our present and future. And with the apes will vanish much of the wonder and delight that comes from knowing we share this world with such magnificent creatures.
I have shared the last 27 years with one of these magnificent beings, enjoying her company daily in a project that became my life's work. Koko is a western lowland gorilla who has learned over 1000 words in American Sign Language. She showed the world that gorillas have a sense of "self." And she confirmed in her own words that their emotional lives have all the scope and intensity of a human's. Michael is a western lowland gorilla who joined our project 22 years ago, when he was three. He uses his 500 word sign vocabulary to title the beautiful paintings he creates. He combines the signs to tell remarkable stories and share memories, including his own vivid memory of seeing his mother shot before he was captured as a two-year-old. When we asked Michael, at age 6, what he could tell us about his mother, he signed about "big trouble," about being "chased" and "hit." We talked about it again recently, in a taped conversation we are still transcribing, and he described a "sharp noise" the hunters' bullets, perhaps?
Koko and Michael are members of the same species that is being killed and eaten by the thousands, annually, in western Africa.
From the letters we receive, I can tell you that millions of people worldwide have been deeply moved and changed by Koko and Michael. Millions of hearts and minds have been opened to consider and embrace our kinship with the great apes. Millions are eager to preserve and protect their legacy and their place on this earth. But you are uniquely situated to allocate the resources necessary to accomplish this.
With all my heart, I urge you to support this legislation, S. 1007.
Respectfully,
Dr. Francine Patterson
President and Director of Research
The Gorilla Foundation
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