2010 Vol 101.pdf (1.63mb) - Primate Society of Great Britain

empowering local communities living alongside endangered species, a
description of the difficulties and benefits of producing a GIS map of
mountain gorilla habitat, and the use, collection and analysis of
biomaterials. All these chapters have something to offer those attempting to
put conservation into practise on the ground.
The final section focuses mainly on the importance of building relationships
between governments (mountain gorilla transboundary conservation), and
NGOs and researchers (the Great Ape World Heritage Species Project and
www.western-gorilla.com). Stoinski et al. encourage zoos to coordinate
their funding efforts and thus improve the effectiveness of their
contributions and the final chapter focuses on the Bushmeat Crisis
Taskforce and its work in combating the unsustainable bushmeat trade.
I would have liked to see a chapter on human-gorilla conflict resolution
along with more information on the work being conducted with the local
communities in and around gorilla habitats. That aside, I found it a very
useful volume and will be referring back to it in relation to my own project
as it holds so many potentially useful ideas, strategies and initiatives that
can be put into practice albeit on a much smaller scale. The price of the
hardback is high for those on a limited budget but maybe Springer can be
encouraged to bring it out in paperback!
Siân S. Waters
Barbary Macaque Conservation in the Rif (BMCRif), Royal Zoological
Society of Scotland and Durham University
THE GIBBONS: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SMALL APE
SOCIOECOLOGY AND POPULATION BIOLOGY
S. Lappan & D.J. Whittaker (eds) 2009
Springer
ISBN: 9780387886039 (Hardback) £90
Today there are six surviving kinds of ape: humans, bonobos, chimpanzees,
gorillas, orang-utans, and gibbons. Within this domain, however, it seems
that classification of “greatness” in ape species is largely determined by size
alone; and unfortunately, the gibbons have consistently been under
acknowledged by primatologists, and consequently overlooked by the
public eye. Indeed, there is little doubt that substantially more focus has
been placed on great apes rather than their smaller counterparts; still,
gibbons bear many of the same requisites praised in other apes, notably a
high encephalisation quotient, no tail, and rotary shoulder blades.
Additionally, when we consider the value of small apes as being the only
representatives of the evolutionary link between monkeys and great apes, it
is surprising how we still know comparatively little about them.
49