when i was a college student i learned about scientists studying language in great apes and then a friend wrote me a book that changed my life it was jade goodall's reason for hope and that led me to the world of goodall's books where i learned about how she traveled to the forests of tanzania to study chimpanzees i was amazed there were scientists who spent their lives following animals around and observing their behavior goodall discovered that chimpanzees make and use tools and change the definition of what it means to be human then i read more diane fosse studied the population of mountain gorillas living in the ruralist mountains i learned i might not still be around if it weren't for her these visible representations of women in science paved the way for so many female scientists especially female primatologists as a result primatology is full of young women students who are eager to follow in their footsteps and i was one of them i traveled to nicaragua where i took a field course and got to observe howler monkeys and fell in love with watching primates i traveled to the forest of cameroon where i surveyed chimpanzees and gorillas i interned at primate sanctuaries where i worked with captive gibbons and capuchin monkeys and i traveled to little island off the coast of puerto rico where i studied rhesus macaques but it was spider monkeys that i fell in love with after working with captive spider monkeys who had once been kept as pets i wanted to understand the natural social development that these poor monkeys had missed out on so i went to graduate school and spent years traveling back and forth to costa rica to study spider monkey social development and friendship but my perspective on my old heroes started changing when i was teaching a private behavior class for the first time at wake forest university there the library had a special collection of primary source documents collated by one of fosse's biographers i was excited to incorporate them into a class project but then a student of mine came across a letter it was written by fosse to another primatologist dr richard rangel in that letter fossey documented her active conservation methods to deter poaching chillingly she described kidnapping and torturing local people and worse she was advocating for other primatologists to do the same this started a journey for me and tried to understand why we aren't always taught these full histories i want to know who gets to be our conservation heroes and who are the people behind these stories that get left out as i learned just last summer it turns out goodell wasn't the first to discover chimpanzees using tools the earliest discoveries and descriptions of tool use date back to the 1600s and goodell's ability to get funding and access to study chimpanzees was in part due to being a british white woman just as tanzania was transitioning from being a british colony to being its own independent nation the fields of primatology and broader international wildlife conservation are dominated by white americans and europeans and this is in part due to the fact that these fields require so much unpaid labor just to prove yourself and get a foot in the door it's because you need to access those right networks to get paying jobs graduate programs and research opportunities and the societal dynamics mirror the way our society treats promising white students who are mentored to become promising white scientists because they're the ones that are seen as having the most potential while the rest of us have to struggle just a little harder or a lot just to prove to our white supervisors or colleagues that we actually belong or that our ideas have value there are many people in central and south america africa and asia all the places where primates actually live in the wild who can't access these networks and as a result are often shut out of conservation decision making so conservation is often run by foreign affluent outsiders who could afford to travel internationally to volunteer or spend years interning at zoos just to access those right prestigious networks in order to obtain these positions of conservation power if you've grown up far away from primate habitats it's easy to blame local people for conflicts between people and wildlife without recognizing the global economic pressures that shape these dynamics it's easy to bring poaching or deforestation on people halfway around the world that assume they just don't care about the animals and then donate to feel good conservation organizations that frame the donors the organizers and foreign conservation experts as the heroes saving endangered wildlife but the reality is we all play a role in networks of global product consumption it is the actions that many of us do every single day that contribute to deforestation and exacerbate tensions between people and primates for example take the tea and coffee you drink that comes from wildlife habitat across the globe the bananas and pineapples we eat often come from land in central america that was once rainforest where capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys used to live [Music] colton the mineral in our laptops and our cell phones that conduct the charge is mined in the rainforest of central africa where endangered gorillas are struggling to survive and the palm oil in our chicks and cookies an easy map is driving orangutans in the rainforests of southeast asia to extinction these product consumption habits harm both local people and local wildlife as people struggle to feed and support their families while wildlife are pushed from dwindling habitats further into villages and farms and towns some of these networks of product exploitation have their root in colonial rule our european nations exploited people and labor for things like tea and sugar others are due to more recent new colonial exploitation to meet current rising global product demands for things like palm oil and convenience food and quilting for cell phones and it's local people who share their ecosystems with the animals that have the knowledge and insight on how to best manage these issues which often requires improving human health safety and economic security but for foreign researchers coming in sometimes it's easy to focus on these local pressures without addressing the larger global economic pressures and increasingly things like tourism and the popularity of wildlife selfies is contributing to the problem so our science needs to change and our conservation funding structures needs to change and our consumption habits need to change the good news is there are things that all of us can do to start to fix these problems first consider the products you buy and eat and consume from coffee to bananas to the palm oil in your ramen and the minerals in your phone always are you personally endangering primates consider the pictures and videos that you share on social media pictures and videos of primates interacting with humans or inhuman environments fuels the pet trade and increases the exploitation for tourist photo opportunities consider the nature documentaries you watch who are the presenters they show who are the scientists they show are they highlighting local conservationists or are they presenting foreign scientists as the heroes saving endangered wildlife and if you donate to conservation organization before you're swayed by keep picture on the website do a little research who comprises their board who leads their conservation projects and instead of donating to large-scale big conservation programs consider instead donating to smaller locally run projects including humanitarian projects which can often have a bigger impact we all play a role in deforestation and endangering primates and it is our daily habits that contribute to their decline so we all need to be part of the solution and foreign scientists conservation donors and conservation organizers all need to recognize that we should be supporting local conservation leaders and conservative primates instead of assuming that we need no better than they do conserving primates requires all of us but the best thing that those of us can do and places far away from kind of habitat is to start with changing our habits at home thank you