A call to conservation

The University's new photonics center will surely attract many visitors as a research hallmark. However, Duke already has a fascinating research facility in the Primate Center housing 240 of our distant relatives. The prosimians present unparalleled research opportunities and bring the University prestige. Unfortunately, these most primitive of primates face threats of extinction both here and abroad. For Duke's administration to consider closing the center, as it has, seems an abdication from responsibility in science and conservation.

Species housed within the center are critical to understanding aspects of primate evolution. Some present baffling quandaries to researchers, such as the bamboo lemur's ability to consume daily bamboo containing enough cyanide to kill a human. Other species entertain people with oddball antics that may have great survival value--rival ring-tailed lemur troops engage in stink-fights whereby males waft their odors at the opposition to ward them off, rather than engaging in dangerous combat. Lemurs are also the only group of primates where all females are dominant over males. Questions in sociobiology and physiology constantly arise necessitating more intensive research on animals in captivity and in the field.

The University has a right to demand increased research from the center, but it also has a moral obligation to protect the species here by good population management and in their natural habitats. Because of the center, Duke has a unique prestige above universities around the world. As we advance in other academic sectors, we should not neglect our absolute strengths. It is obviously easier to raise funds for areas in which corporate America finds great interest and for which many alumni work, but there are also people who care greatly about the Primate Center's charismatic inhabitants. The research and conservation funding needed for the prosimians pales when compared to other current campus initiatives. If Duke, a University with several billion dollars, can find $100 million for a new photonics center, $35 million for new engineering assets and $10 million for a football facility, it should be able to locate several million dollars to endow its world-renowned Primate Center.

With most Primate Center inhabitants native to Madagascar--a country with net annual revenues around $535 million, about $4 billion worth of debt (maybe Duke should buy the nation as a new East Campus) and 70 percent of the people living below the poverty line--it is imperative that Duke take active steps to ensure the future of the ring-tailed lemur, coquerel sifaka, aye-aye and their relatives. Measures to aid in conservation are imperative, as only 10 percent of all natural habitats remain on this island nation that ranks second amongst all countries in terms of known biological diversity.

Duke staff have in the past worked effectively to help set up national parks and to reintroduce black and white ruffed lemurs, some of whom continue to thrive, adding important genes to the endangered pool. And the University recently provided much needed funding for Primate Center renovations. It must do more. It should actively participate in Malagasy conservation--it should be a pioneering university in this regard. Madagascar is a developing democracy with a myriad of social problems in desperate need of solutions.

Duke students and faculty can work on many of these dilemmas and in so doing develop themselves and the University to a globally significant extent. Without substantial knowledgeable help in the socioeconomic arena, Madagascar's remaining natural heritage is doomed. Conservation in such environments sometimes is relatively simple: paying $1,000 a year for a park guard, teaching women family planning, helping with agricultural techniques or putting more ecological field researchers. The missing step is all too often initiative. Duke University must act quickly and not avoid conservation to favor so-called pure research.

A friend once told me that a researcher simply must get involved with conservation--otherwise his or her subject, be it a forest or species, will disappear. For all practical purposes, the golden-crowned sifaka is extinct with only a few individuals remaining, including a male at the Primate Center. How many more species must venture down extinction's path before Duke recognizes the necessary conservation steps it must take to support research in the long term?

Kevin Ogorzalek is a Trinity sophomore.