Ecotourism and Indonesia's Primates

Dr. Angela AchornAngela graduated from Rhode Island College in 2016 with a B.A. in Anthropology and a minor in Environmental Studies. She earned her M.A. (2018) and her Ph.D. (2022) in Anthropology from Texas A&M University. Angela is a biological anthropologist who explores questions related to cooperation and sociality, sexual selection (and social selection more broadly), cognition, and health in primates. As a graduate student, Angela traveled to Indonesia on a 2019-2020 Fulbright Fellowship to study Sulawesi crested macaques, a Critically Endangered primate species endemic to Sulawesi, Indonesia. When forced to return to the U.S. due to the global pandemic, Angela began studying meat sharing in savanna chimpanzees for her dissertation. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson's Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research.  Dr. Sharon GurskySharon Gursky has been studying wild tarsiers in Indonesia since. Her research questions are quite diverse and include: parental care patterns, the ecological and social factors leading to gregarious behavior, predation and the function of mobbing behavior, the influence of moonlight as well as the effects of tourism on the behavior of the tarsiers and the function of these ultrasonic vocalizations.  Her current work is looking at the effect of artificial light on nocturnal primates.  Dr. Gursky is current a Professor of Anthropology at Texas A&M University.  Dr. Jatna Supriatna Jatna received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico.  He is presently the Regional Vice President and Executive Director for the Indonesian branch of Conservation International.  He is also the President of the Southeast Asian Primatologists Association, Coordinator of the Southeast Primate Specialists Group- Species Survival Commission. For over 10 years he has been the founder and editor for the journal Tropical Biodiversity and is now the editor for the journal Asian Primates.

• Tourism and Indonesia’s Primates: An Introduction- Similar Perceptions of National and International Volunteer Ecotourists Contribute to the Conservation of the Critically Endangered Javan Slow Loris in Java, Indonesia.- Bukit Lawang and Beyond:  Primates and tourism from a provider’s perspective.- Rethinking Tolerance to Tourism: Behavioral responses by wild crested macaques (Macaca nigra) to tourists.- The Effect of Tourism on a Nocturnal Primate, Tarsius spectrum, in Indonesia.- Javan Gibbon Tourism: A Review from West and Central Java Initiatives.- Encountering Sulawesi’s Endemic Primates: Considerations for developing primate tourism in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.- Primates and Primatologists: Reflecting on two decades of primatological and ethnoprimatological research, tourism, and conservation at the Ubud Monkey Forest.- Primate tourism on Java: 40 years of ebony langur viewing in Pangandaran from homestay visits to mass tourism.- Indigenous BirdEcotourism in Halmahera Island, Indonesia.