Of Bonobos and Men ― A Journey into the Congo

When Deni Bechard learned of the last living bonobos matriarchal great apes that are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom he was astonished. How could we accept the disappearance of this being with so much to tell us about our own past? As he looked more closely though, the challenge of protecting them becomes discouragingly clear: Their home in the Congo rainforest has been devastated by war and aggressive resource extraction, and the people there are understandably skeptical of foreign intervention.

And yet, when he decides to travel into the Congo with the Bonobo Conservation Initiative, he realizes through hundreds of interviews, days traveling on motorcycles and canoes, and hours sitting with local guides waiting on apes that poverty does not equate to ignorance, that change requires more than wealth and power, and that only through collaboration can we achieve sustainable species conservation around the world. An adventure travel story as compelling as it is inspiring.

Deni Bechard's first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He has also authored a memoir,Cures for Hunger, and written for a number of magazines and newspapers, among them theLos Angeles Times, Salon, Outside, the National Post,VQR, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and theHarvard Divinity Bulletin. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, the Edward Albee Foundation, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. He has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and he has traveled in more than fifty countries.