Featured Book:

• Great Apes & Humans: The Ethics Of Coexistence

Slideshows:

• Forest of Hope
• Meet the Forest of Hope Chimpanzees
• Forest's Future in Good Hands

Videos:

• Gishwati Area Conservation Program

• Forest of Hope is in good hands

• Forest of Hope

Dr. Benjamin Beck

Scientist, Director of Conservation

Benjamin B. Beck is a comparative psychologist specializing in animal cognition and biodiversity conservation. Research on problem-solving and tool use by primates and birds led to a frequently cited book, Animal Tool Behavior, published in 1980. A second edition, co-authored with Rob Shumaker and Kristina Walkup, will appear in April 2011.

Beck turned his interest in cognition to management and psychological welfare of zoo animals in the 1980s, co-authoring a 1988 survey of zoo gorillas demonstrating the importance of mother-rearing and early social experience for adult sexual and maternal skills. Work on cognitive aspects of husbandry led to a study of adaptation to the wild by reintroduced captive-born animals. Beck coordinated the preparation, reintroduction and post-release monitoring of 159 golden lion tamarins in Brazil between 1983 and 2005. The reintroduced population has now grown to 550, about one third of the entire wild population.

He is co-author of “Best Practice Guidelines for the Re-introduction of Great Apes”, published in 2007 by the Section on Great Apes of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group.

In his current position as Director of Conservation for Great Ape Trust, he is coordinating an initiative in Rwanda to found a national conservation park in the Gishwati Forest and conserve a small chimpanzee population living there. In fewer than three years, the protected area of Gishwati has increased from 2,190 acres to 3,665 acres, and the chimpanzee population has grown from 13 to 19, probably the first time the population has grown in more than 40 years. The Rwandan government has approved Beck’s plan to connect the small Gishwati Forest with the Nyungwe National Park, 50 kilometers to the south, by means of a forest corridor. His team is currently developing innovative and socially just ways to acquire the land for the corridor.

Biographical Sketch

Beck studied at Union College (NY), received his MA from Boston University, and his PhD from the University of Chicago. He was Research Curator and Curator of Primates at Brookfield Zoo from 1970 to 1982, where he was a principal in the design and construction of “Tropic World”, one of the first large-scale mixed species tropical forest exhibits. He served at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park as General Curator and Associate Director from 1983 until his retirement in 2003. He designed the National Zoo’s innovative free-ranging golden lion tamarin exhibit, and was project executive for “Think Tank”, a pioneering exhibit on animal thinking that opened in 1995. He was on the negotiating team that brought giant pandas from China to the Zoo in 2000. Beck was appointed Scientist Emeritus in the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2010. He received an Alumni Professional Achievement Citation from the University of Chicago in 2003.

Beck is an author of more than 50 scientific papers and books, many popular articles and blogs, and has given over 100 presentations at scientific conferences, colleges and universities. He is a member of the Primate Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and of the Executive Committee of the Group’s Section on Great Apes. Beck serves on the Board of Directors of the Golden Lion Tamarin Association in Brazil, is a member of Brazil’s International Lion Tamarin Conservation and Management Committee, and is Assistant Treasurer of Save the Golden Tamarin, a USA-based conservation support organization.

Address:

Great Ape Trust

1515 Linden Street; Des Moines, IA 50309; USA

Phone: 301 802-2639

FAX: 515 243-9367

E-Mail: bbeck@greatapetrust.org

Honors

• Keynote Speaker; Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists; 1998.
• Plenary Speaker; Second International Symposium on Physiology and Ethology of Wild and Zoo Animals
• Alumni Professional Achievement Citation; University of Chicago; 2003

Professional Organizations

• American Zoo and Aquarium Association
• Society for Conservation Biology
• American Society of Primatologists

Scientific Articles

• Faust, L., Cress, D., Farmer, K.H., Ross, S.R. and B.B. Beck. 2011. Predicting capacity demand on sanctuaries for African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). International Journal of Primatology, on line 8 March 2011.
• Animal Tool Behavior: The Use and Manufacture of Tools by Animals(Second Edition). In press. (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press). (Third author with Robert Shumaker and Kristina Walkup).
• Chimpanzee orphans: Sanctuaries, reintroduction and cognition. In press.In: The Mind of the Chimpanzee: Ecological and ExperimentalPerspectives. Lonsdorf, E., Ross, S. and T. Matsuzawa (eds.). Universityof Chicago Press.
• Ruiz-Miranda, C.R., Beck, B.B., Kleiman, D.G., Martins, A., Dietz, J.M., Rambaldi, D.M.,Kierulff, C., de Oliveira, P.P. and A.J. Baker). 2010. Re-introduction and translocation of golden lion tamarins, Atlantic Coastal Forest, Brazil: The creation of a metapopulation. In: Global Re-introduction Perspectives: 2010. Soorae, P.S. (ed.) (Gland, IUCN). Pp 225-230.
• "Best Practice Guidelines for the Re-introduction of Great Apes" IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, Gland, Switzerland, 2007 (First author with K. Walkup, M. Rodrigues, S. Unwin, D. Travis and T. Stoinski).
• Understanding visual barriers: Preliminary evidence for Level 1 perspective taking in an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). Animal Behaviour,2005, 69: 679-687. (Fourth author with D.J. Shillito, R.W. Shumaker, andG.G. Gallup).
• The Effects of Pre-Release Environments on Survivorship in Reintroduced Golden Lion Tamarins. In: D.G. Kleiman and A. Rylands. The Lion Tamarins: Twenty-Five Years of Research and Conservation. (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002). Pp 283-300. (First author with M.I. Castro, T.S. Stoinski, J. Ballou)
• Reintroduction of captive-born animals. In: Olney, P.J.S., Mace, G.M., Feistner, A.T.C. (Eds.), Creative Conservation: Interactive Management of Wild and Captive Animals. (Chapman & Hall, London, 1992), pp. 265-286. (First author with L.G. Rapaport, M.R. Stanley Price, A.C. Wilson).