Question: The inaugural International Primate Day was held earlier this month – What was it?

Jan Creamer: We felt there was a need to focus public and government attention on the crisis facing all primates.

What’s the crisis?

There are four key threats to the survival of primate species: firstly, bushmeat, using primates for meat, which has become an organised international trade (and is threatening the extinction of great apes in Africa); the use of primates as entertainment; the pet trade; and finally research.

The UK is the largest user of monkeys for research in Europe – certainly not an area the UK would like to be seen to be leading the EU.

So the day looked for a way of drawing everyone together to look at the issues which are affecting primates all over the world.

There have been a few events which have drawn attention to these issues, for example, at the end of August in Berlin at the World Congress for Alternatives to the use of animals in research.  The groups there signed up to a declaration on the use of primates in research asking for the practice to come to an end. At the current count 71 groups all around the world have signed up to this declaration.

Then in Kinshasa just last week we had the first conference of the Great Apes Survival Project (Grasp), which is a project of the UN. The conference discussed the survival of the GA especially in Africa and the Far East. The conference focused a lot during that week on environmental degradation, bush meat and the other issues.

Question: Was there any significance of the 1st of September for International Primate Day?

Jan Creamer: We were looking for a day when everyone had come back from their holidays and the politicians were starting to return to focusing on the important issues.

We have registered the day with the UN so hopefully this will help to get worldwide support.

Question: Was the day a success?

Jan Creamer: We were very pleased with the day – because it was a new day we generated a lot of interest.

We wanted to make a day for serious issues but for fun as well, we asked people to nominate their ‘Prime Mate’ with a special primate valentine’s card. We presented a Primate Valentine’s Day card to Tony Blair in London and George Bush in Washington on the same day.

We wanted to highlight the four key threats to Primates: Bush meat, entertainment industry, the pet trade and research.

Question: What are the specific aims of the ongoing My Mate's a Primate campaign?

Jan Creamer: We wanted to educate the public and parliament not only about issues facing primates but also provide some suggestions for solutions.  This is about changing the relationship between humans and the other primate species.

Obviously if you think of all of the different species of primates then there are lots of different problems they are facing. And certainly countries in the west are the engines of the trade which is creating the threats to these animals. It is not an issue where we can just blame other countries, and say ‘oh dear this happening somewhere abroad, where the people in these countries are not looking after their primate species’.  We are contributing to the problem.

Whether it is that we are generating trade through rainforest products such as palm oil and timber, or even coltan used for mobile phones. We generate the pet trade - pet exporters can get the highest prices for exotic pets in the EU and the United States.

What we’ve tried to do with the My Mate’s a Primate campaign is to say to people that primates are our mates, they are our closest animal relative, and there is just a 1-2 per cent difference between ourselves and chimpanzees.

Scientists have published a number of papers recently on the similarities and differences between our species and it has been discovered that our brains are so similar that chimps would feel the same pain as humans in similar situations.

So we aim to point out the similarities but also to highlight what humans are doing to them and how we can change our own behaviour in order to help these species.

Question: ADI attended the UNEP/ UNESCO Great Apes Survival Project Conference last week - what happened in Kinshasa during the conference?

Jan Creamer: The Great Apes Survival project is something the UN has been working on for a few years and last week was its first ever conference and it asked the governments to sign a declaration committing themselves to action for survival of the great apes; the chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimps), the gorillas, and the orang-utans in Asia.

It was an amazing conference, the sense of collaboration and determination between the ‘range states’ - the governments which are home of the species, and the ‘donor governments’ like the UK, EU and US which are able to give money to help the survival of these species, and also the NGOs and the scientists.

I’ve never seen a room in which all of these bodies were represented together, and where all showed such determination to do something to save the great apes. It was a unique collaboration and it was very inspiring.

As a result of the conference we have the Kinshasa declaration – which all of these bodies have signed up together to commit themselves to ensure the survival of our closest relatives.

Question: What can developed nations do to prevent further exploitation?

Jan Creamer: We certainly need to help the range states protect their environment, and the range states explained at Kinshasa that there are several levels where they need help.

They certainly need help with developing their own NGOs who do most of the protection work.  A lot of money is often given to the range state countries but the people on the ground who do the work are frequently the international NGOs, such as ourselves or our sister organisations, but we need to develop similar organisations within those countries.

We also need to help the people on the ground in the local communities to develop their economy so that they are not relying on this level of unsustainable exploitation and we also need to help them protect those animals. Because now what’s happened with the level of exploitation such as with bush meat, it has gone beyond local communities and has become a big commercial industry with meat being exported to countries abroad.

There is a lot of work for us to do to help them develop their economy in sustainable ways.

Our own government should be encouraging people in our own countries not to buy goods which are taken from unsustainable sources.

Question: What more could the UK government be doing to prevent harm and exploitation?

Jan Creamer: I think the UK government has done extremely well and given a lot of money and they have given a lot support to GRASP but I think in the next stage they really need to be proactive in the educational campaign and they need to work closely with organisations like ADI, helping us to educate the general public about the issues surrounding the Great Apes.