The Run!

So, did I do it?

Yes!

Somehow, despite a road closure adding an extra kilometre to the route, I completed the Great Gorilla Run 2011!

I won't lie, it wasn't easy. There is definitely not enough room for a human head and sufficient oxygen to run five miles in a gorilla mask. It is also nearly impossible to run up and down stairs when the eye holes are so small that you can't even see the stairs until your big furry feet are tripping down them. In addition, it's very difficult to drink the bottle of water kindly placed into your enormous gorilla hands when you have a plastic gorilla face plastered over your own. If I've learned anything from this experience it is never to entertain the possibility of running the London Marathon in a gorilla costume. Or even a half marathon, or a less than half marathon, for that matter.

That said, it was quite a lot of fun careering around the posh business bit of London with hundreds of gorillas in fancy dress. My gorilla pirate received huge amounts of attention from passing children, many of whom seemed to think I was the real Captain Jack Sparrow (the fact that I was a gorilla seemed to go un-noticed). Something else I had to get my head around was that there will undoubtedly be hundreds of photographs of me-dressed-as-a-gorilla-dressed-as-a-pirate in Facebook albums of people I don't know, all over the world. The tourists at Tower Bridge seemed to find the peculiar British past-time of running in gorilla costumes more interesting than the architecture!

But most importantly, we helped raise lots of cash to help The Gorilla Organization with their work to protect the gorillas and support sustainable development in their last remaining strongholds. I do not yet have a final total, but I will let you know when I do. In the meantime if you would still like to sponsor me retrospectively, you can do so at This Address!

If you have been kind enough to sponsor me already, thank you very much!


^ Me!

^ Fellow Gorillas

^ Lonely Gorilla

Six Weeks To Go!

With only five weeks and six days left to go until The Great Gorilla Run I still have work to do. In the last month I have acquired my gorilla costume and begun a (small) amount of training, but it's not going to be enough! So this week I need to amp up my running/jogging/flailing about, make my gorilla into a pirate and step up the fundraising efforts! I currently have a long way to go to meet my target of £400, but thanks to the people who have already sponsored me I'm off to a flying start!

But I've decided it's time for an incentive, so if we can make it past the £100 mark then I'll post something a bit more exciting on here, in the form of a video message from your very own pirate gorilla... Still not convinced? Read on to find out about what your kindly donated cash is going to help towards.

The Gorilla Organisation in Uganda
The Gorilla Organisation currently has projects in Cameroon, Gabon, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.

In Uganda the projects involve supporting Ugandan rangers, investing in wildlife clubs to encourage conservation awareness from a young age, farmer training, mushroom growing, beekeeping and supporting the indiginous communities living in the Mgahinga National Park, home to remaining populations of the Mountain Gorilla, by supporting the education and health facilities available to them.

Growing mushrooms provides a source of protein for local people and reduces the likelihood of harvesting wild mushrooms in the gorilla habitat which causes damage to the area. Beekeeping also generates income for people and apiculture workshops are run for people wishing to keep bees and sell honey!

Supporting the rangers is also a very important part of the Gorilla Organisation's work in Uganda. The rangers collect information on the local gorilla populations, remove dangerous traps that can cause horrific injuries to the animals and monitor their health and progress.

And these are just some examples of the work The Gorilla Organisation does in central Africa! Please donate to my fundraising appeal and help protect the last remaining gorillas. Anything you can spare to contribute to the future of these magnificent animals and their forest homes will be greatly appreciated (and it also means that I won't be dressing up as a gorilla and hauling myself around London for no reason)!

Thankyou

Click here to donate (or check my progress)!

(Image courtesy of The Gorilla Organisation)

A New Mission

Hello! First of all, thanks to those of you who have loyally followed the Monkey Mission Blog since it first appeared in 2008, your support is very much appreciated. If you've noticed a 'radio silence' recently it's because I have been lacking in interesting primate related adventures, or at least ones I'm allowed to write about! However, all of that is about to change as I present to you:

The Great Gorilla Run

On Saturday 24th September I will be running through London in a gorilla suit. I will not be alone, there will be 799 other Gorilla Runners with me. All 800 Gorilla Runners are doing so to raise funds for The Gorilla Organisation, who work internationally to help protect the last remaining wild populations of gorillas and their habitats. They do this in several ways: By undertaking research and implementing conservation measures, educating local people and the wider public, and funding development projects including microcredit schemes, bee-keeping and agricultural training.

The route is only 7 km long, but in light of the facts that:
a) I don't run
b) I will be wearing a gorilla suit and
c) I don't run
it actually seems like quite a challenge (If you have, for example, climbed Everest or run the London Marathon dressed as an otter for charity please refrain from commenting!!!)

Over the next couple of months I will use this blog to keep track of my fundraising efforts and preparation for running in a gorilla suit. I'll also be exploring the work of The Gorilla Organisation.

If you would like to sponsor me, then you can do so at: http://events.gorillas.org/gorillapirate
If not, perhaps I can persuade you over the next month or two... watch this space!

Much love,
Rach x

"I'm sorry, I got it wrong."

An earlier post ('What are our woodlands worth?) will leave you in no surprise to hear that I couldn't help but breathe a huge sigh of relief as the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, doubled back on herself today. She said that the obvious displeasure of the general public and some politicians require a different approach to the proposals to sell off a huge amount of land managed by the state.

I see this as quite a victory in the eternal battle to protect biodiversity and maintain public access to an important array of habitats in this country.

As I'm not a politician, or a 'real' journalist, I won't attempt to fill in the gaps for you (they can be found online here). There are still big changes ahead for the management of our forests and the future role, if any, the Forestry Commission will play in it. But whatever the future of our forests turns out to be, today's triumph has lit a small glimmer of hope in another way. It's not often you get a satisfactory apology in the House of Commons these days, which is a step up from the days of "You turn if you want to; the lady's not for turning". It takes more moral fibre to change your mind, especially when everybody's watching, than it would have done to plough ahead in fear of a dented sense of pride.

Orangutan Genome Sequenced

Nature has published an article detailing the draft sequence of a Sumatran orang-utan genome. Unravelling an organism's genome reveals its complete DNA sequence, allowing us access to all of its hereditary information.

The paper (Locke et al., 2011) indicates that the genome of the Sumatran orang-utan has evolved more slowly than that of the other great apes. Geneticists can determine this sort of thing by looking at gene arrangement and, for example, whether or not individual sequences are duplicated or repeated. It also gives an estimate of the speciation time for the two orang-utan species, and suggests that they split from each other as recently as 400,000 years ago.

The team also studied short read sequence data, from both Sumatran and Bornean orang-utans, and found the Sumatran species to be more genetically diverse than the Bornean orang-utan. In a hypothetical situation where human impact couldn't influence the survival prospects of either species, this higher genetic diversity would give the Sumatran orangutan an advantage over the Bornean orangutan. This is because more genetically diverse populations are generally more able to adapt to a changing environment and better equipped to survive disease outbreaks. However, Sumatran orang-utan populations are suffering, with numbers thought to be as low as 7,000 indivuals, whereas the IUCN Red List website offers estimates of 45,000 - 69,000 for the Bornean orang-utan. Both species remain threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, fires and poaching for the pet trade. Unfortuantely for the Sumatran orang-utan, these are things that are unlikely to be dodged by having a high genetic diversity, which means it's down to us to make sure we don't force the orang-utan into the dark depths of extinction.

(For more technical information, see the full paper: Locke et al., (2011)Comparative and demographic analysis of orang-utan genomes. Nature 469, 529–533.

Spying Monkeys?

I don't know how this tale has escaped my notice for so long!

The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars a ship came into difficulty near the coast at Hartlepool. The ship turned out to be French and had a mascot on board: A monkey.

Local men found the monkey, dressed in French military uniform, washed up on the beach and apparently took the monkey to trial for being a French spy! The monkey was then hung to death from the mast of a nearby fishing boat.

Supporters of the legend claimed that a bone washed up in 2005 once belonged to The Monkey. A closer look identified it as a bone of a red deer.

And it gets more bizarre... In 2002, the Hartlepool United Football Club mascot (yes, it was a monkey) was elected mayor of Hartlepool. His election campaign slogan was 'Free bananas for schoolchildren'.

What are our woodlands worth?

Back in November a report was published called 'The Forestry Commission and the sale of public forests in England', which concluded that the sale of public forest estate was inevitable due to governmental spending constraints. What wasn't predicted was the current talk of selling off all land managed by the Forestry Commission, and it has split public opinion quite nicely down the middle.

The 'It's not so bad' Arguement
If the woodlands to be sold could be guaranteed a future, guaranteed appropriate management and guaranteed not to be sold off to developers, then the release of them from government control may not be such a bad thing. It could give greater control to local wildlife trusts and devolve power to those more in the know, perhaps, than a public body such as the Forestry Commission. Commentators sitting in this camp are also likely to mention the fact that many nature reserves are already privately owned and managed by individuals, or that businesses fund various parts of conservation measures in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, for the writing of this paragraph, I do not hold these opinions so I'll swiftly move on to the counter-arguement.

The 'Up-in-arms about it' Arguement
Think about England. Imagine you've just met somebody abroad who has never had access to a television or the internet and you're asked to describe the place. It's an opportunity to sell this little country as best you can, and apart from an obligatory mention of London's sights, The Beatles and copious amounts of tea-drinking, you look for something else that epitomises our nation. Unless you're a city fanatic, surely you wouldn't fail to mention the English countryside? The coastline, the green fields, the woodlands...

The woodlands we have left are under threat if they're sold off. If these woodlands cannot be sold to one buyer then some of them will undoubtedly be lost. If they can be sold to one organisation with good intentions, then fabulous, maybe this can work out okay, but what sort of organisation has enough spare cash to buy 635,000 acres of ancient and royal forests, heathlands and woods? Non-governmental organisations do a wonderful job of managing natural areas in the UK, but even huge organisations like the National Trust and the RSPB have to think about how to manage their existing land; buying all of this extra forested land would be a huge commitment. If the government resort to selling to the highest bidders, who's to say that developers won't get their hands on huge areas of our precious forests? Nobody can promise that, and this is why I think that this is a very bad idea.

Yesterday, 3,000 people made their feelings known at a protest march in the Forest of Dean. Protesters worried that privatising Britain's largest ancient oak forest would result in limited access to the public and increased commercial activities within the forest. Other famous forests in the firing line are the New Forest and Sherwood Forest. Whatever would Robin Hood make of all this? He'd probably be backing something along the lines of 'steal from the rich and give to the poor', rather than 'steal our forests from future generations to make up a small part of the deficit'.

"We will not compromise the protection of our most valuable and biodiverse forests", said a spokesman for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It's hard to take this entirely seriously when "We will not increase tuition fees" is a wound still fresh.

If you haven't gauged my opinion on this yet, then David Bellamy sums it up nicely: "The green heart of Britain is not for sale." You tell 'em David. It would be so very sad to lose even more of our forests.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you!

I had quite a good 2010, even in primatical terms, with finding an animal care job being quite a positive landmark in the year. The highlight for me though was the Hope 4 Apes event held at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in December.

The evening was hosted by Sir David Attenborough, with talks given by ape enthusiasts such as Dr. Jane Goodall DBE (chimpanzees), Ian Redmond OBE (gorillas), Dr Jo Thompson (bonobos), Dr Birute Galdikas (orang-utans) and Chanee (gibbons). The nicest thing was the hopeful theme that connected the talks, which must have stirred the faintest slither of optimism in even the most skeptical, pragmatic, grumpy old conservationist. If you missed it, don't despair, for there is a DVD of the event in production which I will of course bring to your attention as soon as I hear about it!

If that line-up didn't nearly finish me off with excitement, the day before was the icing on the cake as I stumbled across a Jane Goodall book signing in Regent Street at the National Geographic Store. Having discovered it online quite by accident the day before, I dragged my long-suffering friend along and we were treated to a fascinating in-store talk before managing to get the new book signed, as well as an ageing copy of In the Shadow of Man.

It's unlikely then that 2011 can get much better but I'll keep my fingers crossed, and I hope that the coming year will bring you all the opportunities you want, or even just the will-power to seek them out! Good luck.