Raise the Hammer
When acclaimed Montreal author Deni Béchard learned of the last living bonobos — matriarchal great apes which are, alongside chimpanzees, our closest relatives — he was astonished. How could we accept the disappearance of this majestic species, along with the rainforest it calls home?
Determined not to sit by and do nothing, Béchard began investigating the problems facing the bonobos — industrial and urban encroachment, aggressive resource extraction by foreign companies, the civil war and genocide which had wreaked havoc on the Congo intermittently for more than a century, the trade in bush-meat — and in the process discovered one small organization, the Bonobo Conservation Institute, which had done more to save the bonobos than many much larger organizations.
In BCI Béchard recognized a unique post-colonial model for conservation initiatives which, if replicated, might provide one of the only hopes for making the world a far better and more equitable place.
Part polemic, part travelogue, part natural history, "The Last Bonobo: A Journey Into the Congo" offers a moving story of how a few committed people can affect great and lasting change.
Deni Béchard is the author of Vandal Love, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Cures for Hunger, an IndieNext pick for best memoir/biography in 2012. He has written for the LA Times, Outside, Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Maisonneuve, and The Harvard Review and has travelled to more than 60 countries.
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