SAGA and GAIN for great apes
Primates
SAGA and GAIN for great apes
Tetsuro Matsuzawa 0 1 2
0 Japan Monkey Centre , Inuyama , Japan
1 Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University , Inuyama , Japan
2 & Tetsuro Matsuzawa
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Chimpanzee Ai gave birth to her son, named Ayumu, on April 24th
2000, when she was 24 years old. This year, Ayumu turned 15 and has
become the alpha male of the PRI chimpanzee community (Photo
credit: Tetsuro Matsuzawa)
Starting from this issue, the front cover of Primates will
follow a new convention: the same photograph will appear
on all four issues per volume. A new eye-catching cover
shot for each new volume. The image featured on this
edition shows wild chimpanzees at Bossou, Guinea, a field
site at which former editor-in-chief of Primates, Yukimaru
Sugiyama and colleagues, including me, have done
research. Fieldwork has been carried out at Bossou
continuously since 1976, for almost four decades, and at
Mahale, Tanzania, for even longer. This year, the Mahale
Mountains Chimpanzee Research Project (MMCRP)
celebrates its 50th anniversary. The study of the chimpanzees
of Gombe has reached its 55th anniversary. In this article, I
take the opportunity to introduce the situation of captive
chimpanzees in Japan and the rest of the world.
How many chimpanzees are there in Japan? The answer
is 322 individuals in 50 facilities, as of November 25th
2015. Kyoto University has 57 ex-biomedical chimpanzees
housed at Kumamoto Sanctuary, and 13 chimpanzees at the
Primate Research Institute. Kyoto University allows only
cognitive and behavioral research with chimpanzees that
fits within the framework of environmental enrichment for
promoting animal welfare in captivity. With the exception
of the two Kyoto University facilities, the other 48
facilities housing chimpanzees in Japan are all zoos.
Regarding the other great apes, there are: 6 bonobos
housed within one facility, Kumamoto Sanctuary; 24
gorillas in 9 zoos; 48 orangutans in 21 zoos; and 179
gibbons in 43 zoos. This data is regularly updated and
accessible to the public in English as well as in Japanese.
Please visit the following website maintained by GAIN:
Great Ape Information Network. http://www.shigen.nig.ac.
jp/gain/.
My other aim in this article is to outline briefly the
history of the two key organizations within Japan
promoting conservation, welfare, and non-invasive scientific
research of great apes: SAGA and GAIN. SAGA stands for
‘Support for African/Asian Great Apes’ and was founded
in 1998 in collaboration between researchers of great apes
and members of the public. Please visit the SAGA website:
http://www.saga-jp.org/indexe.html.
Japan ratified CITES (the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) in
1980. In the 1970s, about 150 chimpanzees were imported
2
from Africa to Japan for hepatitis C studies; there were
formerly three pharmaceutical companies using
chimpanzees for biomedical research. In 1998, SAGA began the
fight to prevent the use of chimpanzees in invasive
biomedical research. In return, on behalf of laboratory
researchers, SAGA promoted the post-mortem utilization
of chimpanzees. SAGA also initiated the project to
maintain an online database of great apes in Japan: GAIN,
introduced above. Since 2002, GAIN has been financially
supported by the Japanese government: Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan
(MEXT).
In 2007 all biomedical research was stopped completely
in Japan thanks to extensive support from the public. By
the end of 2008, all remaining chimpanzees were relocated
to a sanctuary run by Kyoto University, Kumamoto
Sanctuary: http://www.wrc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kumasan/indexE.html.
In Japan, biomedical research on chimpanzees has come
to an end. The next outstanding problem to address is the
use of chimpanzees by the media and in the entertainment
business. I currently take the role of president of the
International Primatological Society (IPS). The IPS has
established a policy statement opposing the media use of
nonhuman primates as performers, photo props or actors,
see: http://www.internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/
OppositionToTheUseOfNonhumanPrimatesInTheMedia.
cfm.
Humans should not separate infant chimpanzees from
their mothers. I have witnessed the birth of seven infant
chimpanzees at the Primate Research Institute (PRI), Kyoto
University, over the past four decades. Provided that the
infant clings to its mother after delivery and that the mother
embraces her baby, there should be no fundamental
problem with maternal rearing. Across the world, there are still
a few cases in which people isolate the infant from its
mother, where the sole priority, the justification, is to save
the life of the infant chimpanzee. We should not
permanently separate infant chimpanzees from their mother for
any reason. In cases where the veterinarian judges that
temporary separation is essential for medical reasons, the
infant should be returned to the mother at the earlies (...truncated)