The following is the full Foreword as it appears in the book.
By Jon Stryker
President and Founder, Arcus Foundation
IUCN Patron of Nature, International Union for the Conservation of Nature
Over 10 years ago, the ape conservation team at the Arcus Foundation came to me with the innovative idea to develop a series of reports regarding the state of the apes. This was inspired by their work with our many grantees and partners around the world who had invaluable insights into the huge spectrum of complex issues impacting ape populations, but whose knowledge was widely dispersed and difficult to access. In addition, many industry leaders, investors, government agencies and other stakeholders were making decisions that had serious, deleterious impacts on apes and their habitats. This was due to a lack of awareness, poor access to information and analysis that would enable them to make more informed, sustainable choices, and a lack of signposting to help them source that information and identify relevant experts to advise them.
I had always envisioned that Arcus could do more than simply provide financial support to our grantees on the frontlines. This project seemed to me a useful opportunity to invest in collective action to help turbocharge the generation of knowledge in the field and thus truly advance great and small ape conservation. The Arcus Foundation had never undertaken a project like this, and there was certainly an element of risk in the proposition; but it seemed a risk well worth taking. It has been our hope that the series would become an important and well used compendium of knowledge for the field, but it was also envisioned for the series to be a resource that would help inform key global-level financial, governmental and industry leaders who often make extremely influential decisions that impact ape populations around the world.
Just months after those early conversations, we forged a partnership with Cambridge University Press, and here we are: 10 years and five volumes later. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have been a part of this project, particularly this final volume, the timeliness of which is breathtaking. It often seems that many among the world’s population who live in large cities of highly developed countries feel little connection with non-human animals beyond their domesticated pets. For them, at least, before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the threat that disease posed to non-human animals had hardly been top-of-mind or even relevant to the lives they were living. The principal editors and their collaborators began developing this latest book in the series in 2020, just four years after the Ebola pandemic of 2014-2016 and just as the global debate raged regarding whether the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus had originated in a Chinese market, a laboratory, or through other means. Our species was getting a refresher course on the connections between human and non-human health on a greater scale than at any other moment, certainly in my lifetime. We humans were confronted with the fact that our health and that of other species are intertwined in an extremely high-stakes fashion.
Of course, conservationists, scientists and ecologists have long been interested in understanding and addressing the threat that disease represents to the health and survival of millions of species who define and sustain critical ecosystems that support all life on Earth and define the world as we know it. Each day, we lose between 150 and 200 species to extinction, and climate change is unquestionably accelerating that pace. Their loss is colossal in terms of both the intrinsic value of the species and of the role they play in ensuring the biological diversity and integrity of the planet. The magnificent and charismatic nature of endangered apes, who share precarious landscapes with countless other endangered species and marginalized human communities, and who are particularly vulnerable to extinction due to their slow reproductive rate, make them compelling subjects for a series like this one. The importance of this volume and those that preceded it—to ape conservationists like its authors, to me and to anyone committed to building a sustainable future—cannot be exaggerated.
The contributing authors have done an amazing job of presenting the complexity of threats to ape health and wellbeing, as well as the trade-offs presented by the matrix of approaches to managing these threats. The authors present important information about the similarities between human and non-human ape susceptibility to disease, the differences between disease and disease management scenarios in captive apes and wild apes, the role of non-infectious threats to ape health, and the infectious risks that a strategy like tourism or research can introduce, even as it serves to mitigate other negative forces affecting ape health.
Throughout each chapter, the authors share actionable insights, but they also identify knowledge gaps and critical questions worthy of further research and inquiry and present frameworks and constructs that will serve future work. For example, Chapter 2 on the One Health movement explains in compelling detail how the health of humans, non-human animals, and every element of the natural environment from plants to oceans is just that—one health. Like a kinetic sculpture, any disturbance in its design has the potential to wreak havoc. Ensuring its function is a delicate imperative that will require the kind of disciplined, fact-based approaches reflected in the case studies of this volume.
Of course, attending to One Health is not just about science. It requires the engagement and collective action of an inestimable number of people and institutions, and the authors rightly emphasize the importance of forging and leveraging alignment with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all member states of the United Nations in 2015. The beauty of this publication is that it bundles science, strategy and hope into a single package comprising baseline data and analysis to support work toward progress that no single individual or entity can achieve alone.
As a committed ape conservationist and philanthropist, I have been proud and excited to support this series through the foundation I founded more than 20 years ago. I am confident that State of the Apes will be an important resource for years to come, and I offer my congratulations and thanks to all who brought their extraordinary brains and hearts to this project.
