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Tag: Gorillas

  • ‘Banksy woz ere.’ London Zoo is the latest to remove street artist’s animal mural for protection

    ‘Banksy woz ere.’ London Zoo is the latest to remove street artist’s animal mural for protection

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    LONDON — The gorilla and other animals that appeared to have escaped from the London Zoo in Banksy ‘s most recent work have been taken into safekeeping.

    The zoo said it removed the elusive street artist’s mural on its gate Friday evening to preserve it and return its entrance to full operation after mobs of visitors came to see it over five days last week.

    It was covered with a reproduction of the work and a sign using British slang that said: “Banksy woz ere.”

    “We’re thrilled by the joy this artwork has already brought to so many, but primarily, we’re incredibly grateful to Banksy, for putting wildlife in the spotlight,” Kathryn England, the zoo’s chief operating officer, said on its website. “This has become a significant moment in our history that we’re keen to properly preserve.”

    The work spraypainted with a stencil showed an ape holding up part of the roll-down gate, allowing birds to fly off and a sea lion to waddle away as three sets of eyes peered out from the darkness inside.

    It was the final animal-themed work by the artist to pop up over nine consecutive days around London. And it’s the most recent one to disappear from public view.

    The meaning of works by the artist known for making political statements has been widely debated online. The zoo said its mural had sparked thought-provoking conversations from people ranging from a 5-year-old to Banksy buffs. Some suggested it was a play on guerrilla art or a comment on the role of zoos.

    A representative for Banksy told the Observer that the series was intended to be uplifting and amusing during tough times.

    Banksy, who began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, has become one of the world’s best-known artists though he has always shielded his identity. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.

    The zoo mural is at least the fifth in the animal series to be either stolen, defaced or moved to a secure place for protection.

    A howling wolf painted on a satellite dish to look like it’s silhouetted against a full moon was taken by masked men hours after the artist confirmed it was his work by posting photos of it on his Instagram page. A rundown old billboard that featured a big cat stretching out was removed by a crew as onlookers jeered them.

    The billboard’s owner told police it would be reassembled at an art gallery, the BBC reported.

    A rhinoceros painted on a brick wall that appeared to be mounting a broken-down Nissan parked on the sidewalk was tagged with graffiti and the car was taken away.

    A small police guard post that had a circling school of piranhas painted on its windows so it looked like a fish tank was removed by the City of London. A spokesperson said it would eventually be placed where it can be viewed by the public.

    Jasper Tordoff, the Banksy expert at MyArtBroker, told The Associated Press that he liked the idea that the final mural in the series may have been the revelation that all those other animals — elephants, a goat, monkeys and pelicans — seen around London had come from the zoo.

    But he also said the artist, well aware of the attention any of his works receives, may have been anticipating public reaction that went beyond simple appreciation.

    “He might also be making a comment on our human nature to desire to own things, even if that means breaking the law,” Tordoff said. “But then also in quite a nice way to also try and look after these pieces and preserve them.”

    The zoo, which had protected the mural when it was on display behind a see-through plastic shield and guarded by security officers, has not announced what it will do with the work.

    Its removal, though, means the work is being conserved — like the animals themselves. If it goes back on display it may be inside the zoo where it can be seen but not touched.

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  • Baby gorilla cuddled by mother at London Zoo remains nameless

    Baby gorilla cuddled by mother at London Zoo remains nameless

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    LONDON — The newest endangered baby gorilla at the London Zoo is more than six weeks old but doesn’t yet have a name. Zookeepers aren’t even sure if it’s a male or female because they haven’t been able to get close enough to examine it.

    A photo taken Monday by The Associated Press shows why: The gorilla’s mother, Effie, has the baby in her loving cuddle.

    “It’s actually quite tricky to sex a young gorilla without a close-up examination,” said Rebecca Blanchard, a zoo spokesperson. “The infant is still held closely by its mum most of the time, and here at London Zoo, we leave the baby in mum’s capable hands.”

    The tiny ape that arrived Feb. 8 is one of two baby western lowland gorillas born at the zoo this winter. Another mother, Mjukuu, gave birth to a little one almost a month earlier.

    Both babies were sired by Kiburi, a 19-year-old silverback brought to the zoo from Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands as part of a conservation breeding program to help preserve the critically endangered gorilla subspecies.

    The birth of Effie’s baby wasn’t simple. The gorilla arrived wrapped in its umbilical cord, posing a possible threat to its life.

    Zookeepers watched over it for the first three days, making sure it continued to feed and move around until the cord finally detached.

    London Zoo, located within Regent’s Park, is opening a new habitat to the public on Friday called The Secret Life of Reptiles and Amphibians to replace its old Reptile House.

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  • Lions, tigers, taxidermy, arsenic, political squabbling and the Endangered Species Act. Oh my.

    Lions, tigers, taxidermy, arsenic, political squabbling and the Endangered Species Act. Oh my.

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    The fate of the mounted lion, tiger, polar bear and gorilla that have long greeted visitors entering South Dakota’s largest zoo is grim after arsenic was found to be widespread in the taxidermy collection, creating a raging debate about whether the more than 150 animals should be destroyed.

    Some locals who grew up around the menagerie, which used to fill a hardware store, are fighting the mayor and zoo officials to keep the collection, marshaling activism online and in the Sioux Falls City Council. They are buoyed by experts who say the arsenic risk is overblown, the mounts nothing short of art.

    “They’re not stuffed animals. These were sculptures,” said John Janelli, a former president of the National Taxidermists Association, likening destroying them to scraping off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

    The arsenic, he adds, is a heavy metal, not something that wafts through the air.

    “Just don’t lick the taxidermy,” says Fran Ritchie, the chair of the conservation committee of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections. “You’ll be fine.”

    Most institutions with older collections take safety protocols, like using special vacuums and wearing personal protective equipment while cleaning the taxidermy, said Gretchen Anderson, a conservator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

    But for Sioux Falls, there is “there is no acceptable level of risk when you are dealing with a known carcinogen,” City Attorney Dave Pfeifle told reporters last week.

    The mayor and zoo officials believe reason and safety are on their side. But even if they can convince the town to get rid of the animals, they’ll have to navigate a web of federal and state laws to do so.

    The Endangered Species Act protects animals even in death, so the collection can’t be sold. Under federal law, they could be given to another museum. But state law stipulates that exhibits like this must remain within the state.

    It wasn’t this messy 80 years ago when a Sioux Falls businessman embarked upon a series of international hunting expeditions chronicled in his eponymous book, “A True Safari Hunter: Henry Brockhouse.”

    “For walrus, you have to go out and travel the sea. If you see a head poppin’— one or two miles away — wherever it may be, you start shootin,’” one passage reads.

    He proudly displayed some of his prize kills at his West Sioux Hardware store. But by the time he died in 1978, international laws and the Endangered Species Act were cracking down. There was a growing concern that hunters were pushing some exotic animals to the brink of extinction.

    When the hardware store closed, Brockhouse’s friend, C.J. Delbridge, snapped up the collection and donated it to the city. The natural history museum that bore Delbridge’s name opened in 1984. An African elephant that was mounted after Brockhouse’s death added to the display. China also donated a mounted giant panda.

    In recent years the mounted animals showed their age, including some tears, said Great Plains Zoo CEO Becky Dewitz. As it considered what to do with them, her team had them tested.

    In August, the results came back: 79% of specimens tested positive for detectable levels of arsenic, the city said. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, showed that the contaminated mounts included a jungle cat and monitor lizard.

    With protective gear, taxidermy can be moved safely despite arsenic, said Jennifer Menken, the public collections manager at the Bell Museum of Natural History. Her institution moved 10 historic taxidermy dioramas to its new space at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus about five years ago.

    Other steps can be taken to keep the public safe, she said, including encasing taxidermy in glass. That protects them against temperature, humidity and, of course, visitors licking them.

    But in Sioux Falls, cost was a barrier, said Dewitz. So now the animals are hidden behind barricades as the city considers its options.

    Some items are earmarked for the National Wildlife Property Repository near Denver, which stores a massive collection of seized wildlife items, including elephant tusks and crocodile skin purses. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates it, won’t take any with arsenic, said spokeswoman Christina Meister.

    Dewitz said she’s had a hard time finding other takers, and Mayor Paul TenHaken said he fears the city could still face liability even if it gives them away.

    “I know that’s a popular narrative to say that we would just take artifacts like this and treat it like a Papa John’s pizza box,” the mayor said, insisting that is not the case. He was critical of what he described as “misinformation.”

    Critics claim that the city and the zoo found the arsenic on purpose, as part of a ploy to replace the space with a butterfly garden and aquarium.

    Brockhouse’s granddaughter, Barbara Philips, suspects as much.

    “I am sick to my stomach,” she said.

    She wants the specimens to be repaired, and kept behind glass as her grandfather did. The 1981 donation agreement, which the AP obtained through a records request, said the mounts “shall be behind a partition of glass or other suitable material.”

    The mayor is fed up with the whole thing, and has chastised City Council members who opposed the closure.

    “There’s a million things I’d rather be working on right now than this,” the mayor said.

    A Facebook group marshaling fans of the exhibit has more than 1,400 followers.

    Group creator Jason Haack sells and displays a collection of “unique weird odd items” at his family-run Abby Normal’s Museum of the Strange south of Sioux Falls. He said three business area owners offered $170,000 to fight the closure. His attorney thinks it will be an uphill battle.

    “What they’re doing could cause a ripple effect throughout the whole world of natural history museums, and people now questioning the safety of them,” Haack lamented.

    The ultimate decision rests with the City Council, which is scheduled to hear a report and then vote at a pair of September meetings.

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  • In Africa’s Okavango, oil drilling disrupts locals, nature

    In Africa’s Okavango, oil drilling disrupts locals, nature

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    MOMBASA, Kenya — Gobonamang Kgetho has a deep affection for Africa’s largest inland delta, the Okavango. It is his home.

    The water and wildlife-rich land is fed by rivers in the Angolan highlands that flow into northern Botswana before draining into Namibia’s Kalahari Desert sands. Several Indigenous and local communities and a vast array of species including African elephants, black rhinos and cheetahs live among the vibrant marshlands. Much of the surrounding region is also teeming with wildlife.

    Fisher Kgetho hails from Botswana’s Wayei community and relies on his pole and dug-out canoe to skirt around the marshes looking for fish. But things have changed in recent years — in the delta and across the country.

    “The fish sizes have shrunk, and stocks are declining,” Kgetho, whose life and livelihood depends on the health of the ecosystem, told The Associated Press. “The rivers draining into the delta have less volumes of water.”

    Drilling for oil exploration, as well as human-caused climate change leading to more erratic rainfall patterns and water abstraction and diversion for development and commercial agriculture, has altered the landscape that Kgetho, and so many other people and wildlife species, rely on.

    The delta’s defenders are now hoping to block at least one of those threats — oil exploration.

    A planned hearing by Namibia’s environment ministry will consider revoking the drilling license of Canadian oil and gas firm Reconnaissance Energy. Local communities and environmental groups claimed that land was bulldozed and cut through, damaging lands and polluting water sources, without the permission of local communities.

    Kgetho worries that rivers in his region are drying up because of “overuse by the extractive industries, including oil exploration activities upstream.”

    In a written statement, ReconAfrica, the firm’s African arm, said it safeguards water resources through “regular monitoring and reporting on hydrological data to the appropriate local, regional and national water authorities” and is “applying rigorous safety and environmental protection standards.”

    The statement went on to say that it has held over 700 community consultations in Namibia and will continue to engage with communities in the country and in Botswana.

    The company has been drilling in the area since 2021 but is yet to find a productive well. The hearing was originally scheduled for Monday but has been postponed until further notice. The drilling license is currently set to last until 2025, with ReconAfrica previously having been granted a three-year extension.

    Locals have persisted with legal avenues but have had little luck. In a separate case, Namibia’s high court postponed a decision on whether local communities should pay up for filing a case opposing the company’s actions.

    The court previously threw out the urgent appeal made by local people to stop the Canadian firm’s drilling activities. It’s now deciding whether the government’s legal feels should be covered by the plaintiffs or waived. A new date for the decision is set for May.

    The Namibian energy minister, Tom Alweendo, has maintained the country’s right to explore for oil, saying that European countries and the U.S. do it too. Alweendo supports the African Union’s goal of using both renewable and non-renewable energy to meet growing demand.

    There are similar fears of deterioration across Botswana and the wider region. Much of the country’s diverse ecosystem has been under threat from various development plans. Nearby Chobe National Park, for example, has seen a decline in river quality partly due to its burgeoning tourism industry, a study found.

    In the Cuvette-Centrale basin in Congo, a dense and ecologically thriving forest that’s home to the largest population of lowland gorillas, sections of the peatlands — the continent’s largest — went up for oil and gas auction last year.

    The Congolese government said the auctioning process “is in line” with development plans and government programs and it will stick to stringent international standards.

    Environmentalists are not convinced.

    Wes Sechrest, chief scientist of environmental organization Rewild, said that protecting areas “that have robust and healthy wildlife populations” like the Okavango Delta, “are a big part of the solution to the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises we’re facing.”

    The peatlands also serve as a carbon sink, storing large amounts of the gas that would otherwise heat up the atmosphere.

    Sechrest added that “local communities are going to bear the heaviest costs of oil exploration” and “deserve to be properly consulted about any extractive industry projects, including the many likely environmental damages, and decide if those projects are acceptable to them.”

    Steve Boyes, who led the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project that mapped the delta, said researchers now have even more data to support the need to maintain the wetlands.

    Aided by Kgetho and other locals, whose “traditional wisdom and knowledge” led them through the bogs, Boyes and a team of 57 other scientists were able to detail around 1,600 square kilometers (1,000 square miles) of peatlands.

    “These large-scale systems that have the ability to sequester tons of carbon are our long-term resilience plan,” said Boyes.

    For Kgetho, whose journey with the scientists was made into a documentary released earlier this year, there are more immediate reasons to defend the Okavango.

    “We must protect the delta,” Kgetho said. “It is our livelihood.”

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    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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