Africa's last wild great apes are vanishing. Studies suggest that unless their situation can be stabilized, they may become extinct in the wild within 20 years. The problem has been exacerbated by logging of their habitat and a huge increase in poaching as hunters gain access to forests along logging roads.

Karl Ammann is a Swiss-born veteran wildlife photographer, author, and conservation activist. He has become increasingly outspoken about the "bush-meat crisis"—bush meat being the meat of wild animals, including apes. The latest book to feature his images, Consuming Nature, draws attention to the slaughter in Africa's remaining forests.

Ammann's sometimes brutally explicit photographs are meant to expose the harshness of the fate of the great apes and other forest animals in the hope that people everywhere will be shocked into learning more and doing something to help. (See Photo Gallery 1 and Photo Gallery 2)

National Geographic News interviewed Ammann about his controversial activism. The interview took place by e-mail, with Ammann often responding to questions late at night from his home near Nanyuki in Kenya, or from Thailand, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he was traveling mostly to document conservation issues.

Ammann has lived in Africa for 25 years, half of that time in his current home on Mount Kenya, which he shares with his wife Katherine, two domesticated chimpanzees, and numerous dogs.

You criticize National Geographic and others for promoting "feel-good conservation." What do you mean by that, and what is your concern?

Anybody who travels this planet and decides to keep an eye on the state of the natural world, as I do regularly, and then combines this anecdotal firsthand data with the flood of scientific information coming over the Internet will come to the conclusion that our natural world is in a hell of a mess.

Anybody sitting at home reading National Geographic, watching [the Discovery TV channel] Animal Planet, and sending an annual check to a major conservation organization will not get that impression. He or she will be confronted with a wide range of "world-in-order tales," with the problem issues tacked on at the end of the story, perhaps with one little paragraph or picture.

Most producers and editors have decided that the public does not want to be confronted with the harsher realities and that their main mission in life is to entertain and not to lose viewers turning to other entertainment.

Conservation organizations go a step further. They combine the tale of success stories with highlighting some "new problem issues" and the message: If you write us a check we will take care of it. That is what I call feel-good conservation.

Do you feel that horrifying the public is more effective in raising awareness and promoting action? Do you have any evidence it's worked?

[The Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal in Iraq] was a nonissue as long as it was words only. Then things changed drastically once CBS ran images. Views of the Vietnam war changed drastically with the image of the naked girl with the napalm burns running down the street.

I guess I had hoped hard-hitting bush-meat images—the killing of charismatic mega fauna [gorillas, elephants, and so on]—might have a similar impact and affect the course of the war on wildlife. Clearly that has not happened.

In my opinion, [it has not happened] mostly because editors and producers of documentaries have decided they know what the public is ready for.

What do you say to the argument that bush-meat hunters naturally place their own survival above that of animals?

The bush-meat crisis is not the result of a farmer having a few snares in his fields or the forests behind his fields. The bush-meat crisis is one of lawlessness, one of poor governance, and one of short-term greed. It is about a commercial trade run by outlaws. It is about logging companies opening up previously inaccessible forests.

By the time a gorilla or elephant steak ends up on the plate of a middle- or upper-class urban dweller—who might have paid two to three times what he or she would have paid for the same amount of beef or pork—most likely some six national laws have been broken. And the consumer as well as the producer know it.

The bush-meat crisis is just one aspect of the much wider problem of having largely dysfunctional governments in central Africa. It is not about starving people.

None of the commercial hunters I have met would have starved if he had refrained from hunting totally protected species.

Putting the commercial aspect of bush-meat hunting in the context of poverty alleviation and food security is just one more convenient way for policymakers to not have to deal with the realities on the ground: that of dysfunctional, lawless government structures.

You also blame the developed world for the bush-meat crisis. What's your argument?

Our politicians might not order a gorilla carcass for Christmas or employ a personal hunter as they might a gardener—something we have documented with high government officials in Cameroon. However, we have a U.S. President going on record with statements to the effect that high energy consumption is an American way of life and that it should be the goal of the policymakers to protect the American way of life.

[Former] presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said the U.S. should address the energy crisis through supply and not demand.

Knowing what we do about the pressure on the remaining hydrocarbon resources and global warming, [this policy], to me, amounts to having elephant steaks for Thanksgiving at the White House. If our leaders are not able or willing to confront voters and taxpayers with some of these realities—and "sell" some real sacrifices—how can we possibly preach to developing nations' leaders about sustainable use of their wildlife?

Do you think there is any hope of turning things around? What's the solution?

As I state in my chapter in [my earlier book] Eating Apes, deception and self-deception seem to be part of our hard wiring, a part of human nature.

Generally we will not, as individuals, deal with the harsh realties of global warming, the unsustainable use of a wide range of resources, and so on, until our leadership takes the lead and forces us to do so with new legislation. And that is not happening.

[Perhaps] the heads of the big conservation NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] should take the first step.

For example, [NGOs could convene] a joint press conference at the U.N., telling the world, We have tried for 30 years and we are not winning. It is all straight downhill. The "quiet diplomatic approach" has failed. We will try a new one.

The NGOs could say they are no longer willing to do the window dressing for the big players—the UN, the World Bank, the European Union, the G8.

They could say they will no longer pretend we can turn things around on a few million dollars from the [international institutions], offered for a project here and there.

We will stop celebrating when Colin Powell addresses the World Summit on Sustainable Development and, as the only [concession], offers a U.S. 54-million-dollar package to finance a Congo Basis Initiative—with one of the objectives being the [covering up of environmental degradation by] the extractive industries [such as mining and logging].

They could point out that with a fraction of the money the U.S. spends on its military, we might be able to make a difference, that spending big bucks on the environment and reversing the unsustainable resource extraction will do more for world security than another new range of missiles.

Let's add an example here: The Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC] is about the only nation in central Africa where most of the productive remaining primary rain forest has not been allocated to industrial logging. A one-billion-U.S.-dollar trust fund might be a politically sellable package to get the Congo government to reconsider its position in turning its forests into quick cash.

However, what is happening? The World Bank recommends that Congo become the biggest producer of timber in Africa and 60 million hectares [230,000 square miles] of forest be opened up. [Read what the World Bank says about this.]

You criticize people who write checks to "buy" themselves a green conscience. What do you suggest people do to make a difference?

My answer is, stop writing checks to any organization that does not have independent auditing of its projects—and I am not talking about the financial aspect but the effectiveness of what is being achieved—and that does not make this information public.

One of the greatest problems in conservation is that these organizations feel the only way to raise money is by selling success stories and hiding failure. The result is that we do not know what works and what does not work, and we have not learned any real lessons from all the failures.

This should apply to institutional donors as well.

Do not spend less, spend more—but spend it on audited success stories not on fairy tales.

What about tactics in the field, among the local people? Do you think a soft approach—education and persuasion—might have failed? Do you favor a harsher effort, such as shoot-to-kill poaching enforcement by park rangers, as has been started in some parts of Africa?

Let's answer this in the context of the first question and using a very specific example: the National Geographic Special [television] features on decades of Jane Goodall's conservation efforts [with chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania].

These are the most famous chimps in the world. National Geographic must have featured them in dozens of documentaries. Millions of dollars have been spent on them and made on their back.

Today there is only a small patch of forest left for these chimps, compared with when Goodall started her work. The total chimp populations have plummeted. The buffalo herds that were there when she arrived are all gone, as have the hippos and the crocodiles from the lake. There have been attacks by humans infringing the chimps' territory along the lakeshore and reports of killings of chimps for meat for the first time—in the very south of the park.

Today the planting of trees around the park—after watching the forest coming down for 30 years—is celebrated as a success story, a success of education and persuasion, as you call it. I would say the time has come to put an electric fence around the remaining patch of forest.

In many such hot spots there is no time left for the soft approach. In places where there might be, it should be tried, but it should be tried based on lessons learned from the failures of the past.

You have been said to scare off World Bank funding of sustainable development. Some say it is better to work with the big institutions and the logging companies, rather than to get their backs up and have them not cooperating with conservationists.

I am against World Bank funding that amounts to subsidizing of industrial logging and not [sustainable] development.

Until recently the World Bank sponsored regular meetings between African logging-company chief executives and representatives of conservation organizations. These were business negotiations based on the understanding of balance sheets and profits—who could do what and pay for what.

Some logging companies have passed the buck on bush meat to the conservation NGOs. The NGOs in turn are running around raising millions of dollars to try to control things in one or two concessions.

Some development agencies have gone as far as financing timber inventories on behalf of logging companies, so that maybe someday these companies will be able to achieve some kind of sustainable-logging certification.

There has been no really independent auditing of the effectiveness or progress. There is no longer a legislative, executive, and judicial component to the certifying process. The conservationists have essentially taken on the role of all three, creating serious conflicts of interest.

Other loggers have now caught on and have asked for the same deal, knowing that it is a win-win situation for them. They get rid of a tricky issue, getting a green mantle on top of it—and all at no, or very little, cost.

The latest twist seems to be for conservationists to ask the World Bank to lean on the government of Gabon to reduce logging taxes.

Presumably the idea is that if loggers pay fewer taxes, they will invest more in conservation. That is pretty naive in the context of the business climate these companies operate in.

I believe in negotiating from a position of strength—the notion of advocating consumer boycotts of tropical timber seems to have gone out the window about a decade ago—rather then arriving at the negotiating table as pragmatic beggars, willing to lower the bar pretty much to the ground.

I can understand if the European Union, the World Bank, or the UN Food and Agriculture Organization try to find a way to justify the logging of the remaining primary rain forests.

But when mainstream conservation organizations are in the front line of endorsing the cutting down of the Earth's richest and most productive ecosystems, the word "absurd" comes to mind.

What do you say to allegations that your images may be causing people to kill wild animals, because people know you will pay to be taken to places where hunting is going on and bush meat is sold?

I never had any illusions about winning a popularity contest by questioning some of the conservation NGOs and the egos of people running them. A few years ago a WWF [World Wildlife Fund] bigwig more or less accused me of setting up the bush-meat crisis so I had something to photograph.

This was at the time my images of five dead gorillas came out. I suggested to him and WWF International in Switzerland that we hold a special meeting.

I would fly in the hunter in question at my own cost, so he could tell his tale and tell them just how ineffective they were in dealing with the bush-meat issue. I could never get them to take me up on it.

I also have correspondence where film crews asked me to accompany them doing documentary films on bush meat. After an experience with a pushy producer, I always insisted that there be no active hunting of any kind while I was with a team.

Some such arrangements fell apart once the producers informed me that their policy was to film whatever was happening naturally. It was not good enough for me. I do not go on any expedition if they are going to film hunting.

To me the stated position of discouraging media interest in the bush-meat issue because it might encourage hunting is mostly a red herring. The allegation is made by those who do not want to deal with questions about their ineffectiveness on the back of negative media stories.

You have pet chimpanzees and other wild animals that live with you. How did that come about? Is it inconsistent that you, a conservation activist, should domesticate wild animals?

We have two chimps and a bunch of dogs. Our 18-year-old chimp we brought home from a Congo River trip about 16 years ago before I got into this conservation business. However, he was a main motivator for me to get into it and to stay with it.

The more he became part of the family, the harder it became to accept that in most parts of Africa these creatures are just another piece of protein.

We were fortunate to own several hectares of forest and fenced in several to create as natural a setting as possible. However, I then initiated a proper chimp sanctuary not far from where we live. It is now well established and home to some 30 orphaned chimps.

While it was being built we accepted several more orphans the authorities did not want to deal with. When [the sanctuary] opened we [put the orphans in it] but held on to the chimp we had brought back from the DRC.

When one of the orphaned chimps we sent to the sanctuary died under very questionable circumstances, we decided that we could do better ourselves [in our home]. A few years ago I brought back another bush-meat orphan, a female already some five years old, again from a rebel-held area in the Congo.

The two are now good friends, and we have two large electrified enclosures with two specially built night-housing facilities, although the big male sleeps in our bed when we are at home—call us fruitcakes if you must.

We have set up a trust that will guarantee that [our domestic chimps] will never have to worry about having to leave their present home, their food, or general care. They will be taken care of for however long they or their offspring might live.

I have very, very little doubt that if they could speak and be given a choice, they would prefer their new life to trying to survive in the forests of the Congo, with poacher bullets flying in every direction.

It is extremely difficult and very costly to rehabilitate formerly captive chimps that have lost the fear of humans. In most of central Africa there is no point in trying, because the problems that created these orphans in the first place have not been eliminated.

So we did not domesticate these chimps. That was done by the hunters who killed their mothers and the traders who took over from there. These chimps cannot be released into the wild.

They have a home that replicates their habitat as closely as possible. Except, after nightfall, they have the choice to sleep in the rain, in a tree nest, or in a warm room with a mattress and blankets.

What's the next thing you will do to drive awareness of the bush-meat issue?

We recently had a very interesting response from [President of France] Jacques Chirac to the book, Consuming Nature. Like the World Bank President, on an earlier occasion, he professed to be shocked by the story it tells. He promised to raise the issue directly with the African heads of state.

I believe that is really where the political will would need to come from—and that there is the potential to create it at that level, if it is combined with the right carrots and sticks.

In this context I feel I have achieved what one can achieve as an "extremist" determined to rock the boat.

My next project is a book about elephants, a book that will allow me to travel to all the places where one can pretend the world is still in order. I felt I needed some uplifting experiences—enough dead elephants for me.

However, I just read a review of a recently published coffee-table book on elephants. The review highlights the book's absence of dealing with issues affecting the conservation status of Africa's elephants—the ongoing destruction of habitat and the continued slaughter for ivory and meat.

The review concluded that [publishing the book] could be compared to publishing a title on the wildflowers of Auschwitz while the Holocaust is going on.

So maybe I can use this review to convince my publisher to allow me to add a "Holocaust" chapter to the elephant book. That way I will live up to my image as a radical extremist.

see Photo Gallery 1 and Photo Gallery 2 on geographic site
our Home Page | Writings | Photo Gallery