Slow Loris Champion Wins 2nd Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation

Anna Nekaris & Virginia McKenna

Anna Nekaris presenting Virginia McKenna with the first mock-up of the children’s book Slow Loris Forest Protector

We are delighted to announce that Professor Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University and the Little Fireface Project (www.nocturama.org) has been awarded the 2nd Virginia McKenna Award for Compassionate Conservation.

Searching for our favourite loris super mother Tereh with local wildlife photographers Wawan Tarniwan and Muhammed Taufik and our head tracker Dendi Rustandi, we were lucky to see her ‘exposed’ right at the front of the bamboo…but she was not alone! With her was our roaming male Azka, who we thought was a faithful partner to One Eye…but when a loris is about to enter her brief window of ‘sexy time,’ it was clear that Azka was not in the mood for being faithful!

Azka and Tereh were suprised by us, ‘caught in the act.’ When lorises copulate, the male ‘locks’ into the female, so they were not going anywhere! Clearly in the act when we arrived, it lasted another 8 minutes, before they were rudely interrupted. Another male, seemingly with a collar but no signal (so probably our long lost Guntur!) appeared and pounced on Azka. Issuing a growl, they fell 7 m from the tree into the stream! Tereh looked a bit shocked but did not move. After a few minutes, Azka made his way back to his prize, but he was not going to let another competitor ruin his chances. Immediately he started voraciously licking his venom gland, holding his arm out like a strongman, and rubbing it all over his head (an area that another loris would be most likely to attack). After about another ten minutes, he and Tereh meandered off together through the bamboo, with no sign of Guntur.

What a birthday present for me! I have written the story of Tereh and her imaginary baby Bunga, but hopefully in about six months, little Bunga will be born and be part of the safe and thriving population here in Cipaganti.

I wanted to write one small post about the very big children’s book we have been working on here at LFP. My story was written in a hotel room in Sukabumi, the night before our LFP loris workshop started. My MSc student Jonna Lehtinen and I has been joking about the loris who would save the carrots…and if the loris should be a super hero – how could we make the local people love the loris?

Well the truth is the local people NEED the loris. The loris does such wonderful things for their ecosystem, and plays a vital role. So what better to empower children with this knowledge in a fun and gentle way?

I have been amazed at the feedback and messages received about our little book and education materials – where is all the death? Where are the ripped out teeth? Where is the forest being burnt down? But when we think back to our own childhoods, would those images have made us love animals? Would we have asked our parents to read us those books over and over again? I think most children reading supposed conservation education books about orang-utans in cages or chimps getting their forest burnt down do not care if the story has a happy ending. Learning theory shows us time and time again that it is only older children or even adults who can process these truths.

The children just need to learn to love. We are so selfish and also just forgetful in the west in many ways. We forget that our children’s books were mainly adorable, funny or just lovely. Those that did have death and destruction probably left an indelible mark, like when Bambi’s mother was shot. I could never look at that page ever again it me so very sad. Children in habitat countries who have never had a book want their first book to be full of life and love…not death and sorrow.

So please wish us all luck as we embark on our venture to introduce the children where we are working to a story totally fully of love, with a teacher’s pack that embraces these facts. Animals feel pain. Animals feel sadness. Animals feel love. Just like we do. And they have their important jobs to do. And that they are totally adorable is an added bonus.

I would just like to take this last paragraph to thank the wonderfully fabulous Shelley Low, who I have never met in person, but she must have entered a world as mad as my own in the last two months, drawing lorises so magical that everyone I have shown them to could not believe they were so beautiful, or that they could be more adorable than a real-life loris.It is as if a loris guardian watched over her to make every eye expression and every nail and every tooth adorable and perfect. Thank you Shelley!

I have never felt more energised by any science project than I have from the hope that this project has given me because without the love of the local people we cannot save the loris. Time will tell and we will give many updates!

But where are all these lorises coming from? And why is it so bad that  they are being carried around the beaches of Thailand? Does it hurt them to have some innocent photos taken? Isn’t it a nice experience for a tourist to hold a cute animal?

You think we should have learned from our experiences in the past – the beaches of Spain for instance, where chimpanzees were exploited for a similar trade. No matter how cute the wild animal is, it is that…a wild animal. These poor lorises are ripped from their nocturnal forest homes, dazzled by the very loud noises of the bustling streets. Even many people do not like to be out in the town of Patong at night, with bright lights, loud music and even louder tourists. For a slow loris, whose quiet life in the dark forest, it must be horrific, and it can be seen on the faces of these animals, as camera flash after camera flash sees them recoil in typical fear postures. Lorises too need to hold branches to feel secure, and holding on to a person, while dressed in a clown’s costume, is not security – it is no wonder they grasp for the slender neck of a beer bottle when it is offered.

Lorises naturally look passive and ‘cute’ when terrified. They do not necessarily need to be drugged, though some are. But most do have their teeth cut out. These teeth are vital for grooming and gouging gum, their most important food source, so these lorises cannot be returned to the wild. On top of that, most cannot survive for more than a few months in captivity on a diet of fruit and paraded in such stressful conditions, so need to be replaced with another wild loris.  So the lorises that Mark and Petra are rescuing are in a halfway house – we don’t know where they should go. But we do know that every time a tourist takes a picture with a slow loris laughs and holds it with their friends, they encourage this cruel trade. So PLEASE do not support the photo prop trade.

Take a moment to see that these lorises can have a better life. Thanks to Mark and Petra for their work in giving some of them a second chance. These photos are by Mark Mason.

“Blank Park Zoo is excited to host the 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation conference in Des Moines, Iowa, July 8 through July 12, 2013.  This biennial conference provides opportunities for zoo and aquarium personnel and field researchers to meet and develop partnerships that benefit wildlife and wild places around the globe. The informal nature of the conference creates a positive atmosphere for networking and inspires collaborative action.”

With generous support by our wonderful colleagues at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and the Cleveland Zoo Society, Anna and Jo will travel to Iowa. We will present the first quantitative results of our conservation education and empowerment projects, participate in the ZACC film night, a round table on conservation action, and are excited to present some new LFP products at the ZACC market place. Not only will we sell our now classic glow-in-the dark tees, but we will also introduce our new line of Tereh and Bunga ‘Slow Loris Forest Protector’ products, including our gorgeous new children’s book, illustrated by Shelley Low.

Sizes and styles available are:

Ladies:
Long Sleeve Hoody Tshirts – £21.50
sm (5), m (0), l (2)

Short sleeve skinny fit – £15.50
Black sm (3), m (0), lg (2)
flame red sm (3), m (1), lg (4)

Men or Women

Regular fit: 15.50
Short sleeve tshirts
black sm (3) md (1) lg (2)
burgundy sm (2) md (1) lg (0)

Children’s

Size 2-3 (1)

Size 3-4 (2)

Size 5-6 (2)

Size 7-8 (2)

Postage & Packing:

£2.20 UK
£3.40 Europe
£5.20 USA/Canada
£6.70 Australia/ Asia

Our Flame Logo was designed by Helga Schulze. It is to represent the plight of the loris, be it perishing due to burning of forest for oil palm, burning in the hot streets when being sold as a pet, or burning in the bright lights of someone’s living room when forced to live as a pet. All shirts glow in the dark! The saying is in Indonesian and English – Don’t Let Me Vanish.

Slow lorises are an evolutionary distinct group of primates found in South and Southeast Asia. All are threatened with extinction not only due to habitat loss, but also due to their high prevalence in Asian traditional medicine, use as tourist photo props, and their high popularity as pets both nationally and internationally. Slow lorises have featured frequently recently in the international media largely due to this conservation crisis. For example, in 2007, they were the first primate since 1986 to be transferred to Appendix I of CITES. From 2009 onwards, they have been a regular feature in the global media as more and more popular media outlets discuss the legality of presence of illegal slow loris ‘pet’ videos on social networking sites.  Finally, the discovery of three new species in 2012 was instantly linked with the fact that these species are not only in sharp decline, meaning bad news for the new taxa, but also with the fact that the loris is the only venomous primate. The latter fact is just one of the many fascinating aspects of ecology within this unique evolutionary group of primates, whose feeding ecology, social behaviour, and even their distribution were not known even ten years ago. In this volume, contributors studying lorises throughout their range in India, Cambodia, Thailand, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Singapore and Vietnam will bring together the first synthesis of the Conservation and Ecology of this fascinating group of species.

We also reflect, that during this week of COP 16 in Thailand that it was only 6 years ago that slow lorises were transferred to Appendix 1 of CITES. It was believed at the time that this move would help to stop the enormous trade in these adorable species. But it seems only to have gotten worse. In 2007, there had not yet been a “tickling slow loris” or “slow loris holding tiny umbrella” or “slow loris eating rice” video to embed in the mind of the public that it is somehow ok to have a wild Endangered animal as a pet because lorises, unlike fierce animals like tigers or pig-tailed macaques, submit when man-handled, and their submission, sadly for them, looks adorable. And in our selfishness, we just seem to want them more and more.

We have just heard that on Facebook, the viral “slow loris eating rice” video has been shared a 20000th time. I even had it shared on my own page by a friend who knew I studied lorises and had seen a film I made about the illegal trade. I was shocked and dismayed. If those we know who know the suffering of the loris think a video like that is okay, what hope is there? Please do your part by NOT sharing those videos and telling everyone you know about the truth behind the illegal trade.

And do enjoy our new newsletter.We could not upload it today! We will try again tomorrow

Loris Pet Leaflet