The reason for trip was to volunteer in rehabilitation of vervet monkey, indigenous to SA. This small, black faced, green skinned primate is one of such “problem animals” who are disregarded by authorities, despite fact that it is listed as endangered.

I had no clue what a vervet was or aware of vermin tag and what it meant when I had arrived. Rehabilitating vervet was one of possible rabbits picked out of hat, my aim was purely volunteering and to see if I could make a difference.

Killing for food, for survival or even to protect your livelihood would be natural. This would seem to be a valid reason, but what if information available portrays a distorted and inaccurate image. Coupled with typical view that comes with this classification, could other motives be involved or just making an opportunity from it? Consider Matapatcha affair. It is an organisation that deals in supply of monkeys to labs. One of their clients is one that conducted activities within a government owned nature reserve. Despite if there is or not a connection, there are organisations who will with no ethics exploit these animals for their own personal gain. Or even to justify killing of them.

Terry Dashner……………………..Faith Fellowship Church PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013

Capitol Reader Political Book Summaries writes, “In Collapse, Jared Diamond argues that present global resource consumption trends are not sustainable. Throughout history, civilizations have collapsed or declined, in no small measure, because their populations have undermined ecological niches upon which their existence depends. Diamond believes that a complex set of factors, such as environmental resilience (or fragility), social flexibility, larger global trends and even pure luck, combine in unpredictable ways to influence whether societies fail or succeed.”

I have a point of contention with stated summary. But first, let me tell you something about Jared Diamond. Diamond is brilliant and tends to see greater picture of things by studying significance of small things. His book, Guns, Germs, and Steel was a very rich read. It’s amazing how unseen germs, industrialized steel, and other small things shaped world history.

Diamond teaches geography at University of California and is Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. (It seems that others thought book was good also.) He is one of most distinguished experts in field of evolutionary biology. He has written more than 200 articles for magazines such as Discover, Nature and Geo, and his work has proven highly influential in informing public discourse on a range of environmental and social issues. He is a smart, very smart guy.