Column: On my watch – Welcome to a Compassionate Gorilla and Woe to Animal Game-Farmers
By Anne W. Semmes
It’s larger than life, lying outside the Bruce Museum, the world’s largest bronze gorilla, 23-feet-long and 8 feet-5 inches tall. Its name is King Nyani – Swahili for gorilla. The artists, Gillie and Marc Schattner, a married couple living in Sydney, Australia, were inspired by visiting Uganda. They were reportedly, “captivated by a male silverback gorilla’s kindness and compassion with his family.” With that mountain gorilla species critically endangered, they wished to “rewrite the narrative of the violent, terrifying ape often conveyed in movies and acquaint people with the softer, gentler nature of the magnificent beasts.”
And so, they sculpted a 5000-pound “friendly ape lying down on his side with his legs slightly pulled up and his right arm curled as if hugging a child.” The messages about that gorilla read in the Bruce press release immediately gripped me, that showing of compassion and kindness to endangered animals. It was speaking to my wildlife photographer daughter Melissa Groo’s ceaseless campaign in her trade to urge other photographers to do right by animals when photographing them in the wild – and in captivity.
Melissa fell in love with nature and all its beauty and has followed it with her camera around the world. Her art of capturing the beauty of wildlife presently fills the art gallery at Greenwich Audubon.
So, I hurried over to the Bruce Museum to see the gorilla. I wanted to see that compassionate pose. Already, there was a crowd of people there discovering it, and children were in great delight climbing all over it, and there came a small boy climbing into the gorilla’s hand. Boy and beast. “His open hand,” it was written of the gorilla, “invites visitors to sit and feel both his strength and serenity.”
And then came to mind that battle my wildlife photographer daughter is engaged in to protect that animal strength and serenity, to educate about photography game-farms where wild animals are encaged in often pitiful conditions to serve as models for photo shoots for big money. Tigers and grizzlies, bobcats, and wolves, living in small cages, often in filth.
The story is newly told at length and surprisingly in “Rolling Stone” magazine in its forthcoming May issue, but Melissa was able to access it off their website and share with me. And there with stark photos and witness after witness the sorry story is told primarily by those who have worked on those game-farms and left in disgust.
The story focuses on a notable game farm in Montana known as Triple D Wildlife with its animals having “starred” in National Geographic and Disney films, on Nature, and in calendars and ads, and “countless Instagram posts.” Photographers are offered five-day workshops “costing about $900” to get their shots of over a dozen animals. The animal keepers have “trained the animals to leap over logs, stand perfectly still, and howl on cue.” But then there are those photos of the atrocious conditions those animals live in.
Melissa’s photographic modus operandi in comparison is described as, “She will sit with her camera for hours…patiently trying to capture not only an image of a great blue heron on the hunt for a fish, but also the bird’s very essence.” And, for a decade, “she has worked to expose the deceptiveness of game-farm photography and advocated for ethical standards and transparency in publishing.”
But that Triple D game-farm is fighting back. One former long-time trainer, and two other former-employee whistleblowers are being sued by the game-farm owner for “damaging his business” and his reputation. Melissa, as well, in a connected lawsuit is being sued for “tortious interference,” for her “harmful social media campaign.”
Meanwhile, the game-farm owner has created an additional facility called Rivers Edge, LLC and was reportedly advertising on exoticanimalsforsale.net for “2024 babies, including badgers, otters, foxes, lynx, wolves, and bobcats.” He’s also had on his want list those endangered species of tigers and snow leopards. “They’re not animal lovers,” shared a former animal trainer being sued. “In their brains, they think they are, but they’re not. To them, animals don’t have emotions or souls – they’re just a commodity.”
So, hail to the Bruce Museum for bringing to us Gillie and Marc Schattner’s endangered species King Nyani, an adult male mountain gorilla with its compassionate pose. The Shattners are renowned for placing such sculpted rare animals all over the world to raise awareness of endangered species. In fact, there are two other similar gorillas they have placed at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, and another to be installed at the Taronga Zoo Sydney in Australia. And ours is alas only visiting as a three-year loan from an anonymous donor.
And fitting it is to have the last word coming from Robert Wolterstorff, the Susan E. Lynch Executive Director and CEO of the Bruce Museum. “King Nyani is both a stunning work of art and a clarion call for the conservation of these critically endangered animals. He, therefore, marvelously exemplifies the Bruce’s mission to ‘cultivate discovery and wonder by engaging a broad audience through the power of art and science.’”
