DEL.ICIO.USSecluded Georgia refuge takes in misfit gorillas
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Morganton — Oliver, bigger than a linebacker, moves with silent speed, like a flash of hairy light.
In a grand jeté worthy of Nureyev he bursts through the exterior door of his villa into the bright autumn afternoon, pausing to glare at the blazing reds and oranges lighting up the surrounding hills. A small flock of goats follows. They are his steady companions, hoping to filch some of Oliver’s dried fruit snacks.
LOUIE FAVORITE/lfavorite@ajc.com
Jane Dewar interacts with Oliver, one of two gorillas now housed in a private sanctuary for gorillas, Gorilla Haven, near Morganton.
LOUIE FAVORITE/lfavorite@ajc.com
Steuart and Jane Dewar laugh in their North Georgia home, where she holds a bottle of wine with a gorilla label given to the couple by a friend.
• Photos: Asylum for gorillas near Morganton
• Zoo Atlanta's gorillas include numerous old-timers
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Across the meadow, at the door of another villa, Oliver’s neighbor Joe looks out on the same scene. It’s a very different view from the four walls Joe stared at during the 10 years he lived alone in a concrete cell.
Jane Dewar, co-owner of this retreat in North Georgia, digs out a photograph of Joe’s former gulag. She seems on the verge of tears.
“No gorilla should have to live like that,” she said.
Dewar and her husband, Steuart Dewar, have committed their lives and their considerable fortune to guarantee that none will. On a pristine, secluded, 324-acre compound in the mountains of Fannin County, they have built an extraordinary refuge for gorillas such as Oliver and Joe, who don’t have a ready place among the zoos of North America.
Called Gorilla Haven, it is, perhaps, the only privately owned gorilla sanctuary that meets the stringent requirements of the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums, including redundant safety precautions, state-of-the-art veterinary facilities and expert staff. Not open to the public, the facility’s computer-controlled gates and doors and the 10,000-volt electrified fences give Gorilla Haven the air of a primate Jurassic Park.
But the Dewars have taken major precautions to preclude any Jurassic Park-style escapes, starting with the 15-foot concrete wall that surrounds the gorillas’ outdoor habitat. “This is way over-engineered,” Steuart Dewar said of the wall, his London accent undiminished by more than 40 years in the States. “It increased the cost by about 10 percent, but it will take an F-5 tornado.”
Trouble fitting in
A different sort of storm greeted the Dewars when they announced plans to build the refuge in 1997. Local residents organized to oppose it, signing petitions and crowding public hearings. County commissioners responded by creating a stringent ordinance on the keeping of exotic animals, and the gorilla warfare seems to have subsided.
But while some neighbors said Joe and Oliver didn’t belong in North Georgia, the two also had a hard time fitting in elsewhere.
Born at the Bronx Zoo in 1988, Oliver was a teenager before keepers realized he was profoundly deaf. It explained why he couldn’t interact with other males: Gorillas vocalize to negotiate with each other. He had to be separated.
Joe had a similar problem. Captured in the wild in Cameroon, he was at the Birmingham Zoo for 20 years but wouldn’t breed. He was moved to Denver, then Brownsville, Texas, but failed to find a happy home. He was stressed by other males to the point that he developed anemia. Jane Dewar says it’s because Joe had never seen another mature male, or silverback, until he was an adult. Which is why he was put in solitary for 10 years. At 45, he is a senior citizen.
By contrast, Jane Dewar has been keeping company with gorillas for years, starting with her favorite, Samson, who was the Milwaukee County Zoo’s version of Zoo Atlanta’s famed Willie B. After meeting Steuart Dewar in the early 1980s, she drew him into her fascination.
By 1995 Steuart was working 100 hours a week at his business, Dewar Information Systems, which made software for newspaper publishing. But the thrill was gone. He was ready for a change, and she had just the mission for them: Rescue the Joes of the gorilla world.
A hefty investment
Dewar sold his company and they began scouting property in the Southeast. They bought the Fannin land in 1996, and in 1999 hired Pete Halliday, a veteran gorilla keeper from Howletts in England, home to the largest group of captive gorillas in the world. With his guidance they planned Gorilla Haven, creating what some describe as a dream environment.
“I wish I had their doors,” said Charles Horton, curator of primates at Zoo Atlanta, speaking admiringly of Gorilla Haven’s enclosures, with doors made of HY-80 steel, a metal that is light and flexible; it’s usually fashioned into submarines.
Steuart Dewar, an inveterate tinkerer, researched security systems, then designed his own. He taught himself surveying in order to design the compound’s roads. Gorilla Haven ate up most of their savings. But in his spare time in Morganton, Steuart designed a datebook program for the Palm and Handspring hand-held devices. That little application has generated about $6 million, enough to pay for most of the construction so far.
There are two completed “villas” that open into an 8.5-acre outdoor facility, enclosed by the wall. Two other villas connected to the same acreage are unfinished as the Dewars seek funding partners in a rocky economy. Their operating expenses are about $150,000 a year, but Steuart said “we could manage 20 animals here for twice that.”
There are about 370 captive gorillas in 52 zoos in North America, all under the aegis of the international Species Survival Program that directs where each will live and which will breed, including those at Gorilla Haven. Gorillas live naturally in “harem” societies, one male with several females and their offspring. But captive breeding has succeeded dramatically in the past decade, and there is now an abundance of males.
“That means not all the guys get lucky,” said Dr. Kristen Lukas of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, who is chairwoman of the gorilla survival program.
Poised to do more
Zoos, including Zoo Atlanta, have worked to create all-male groups of younger gorillas so that the naturally gregarious animals don’t have to live alone. Gorilla Haven is poised to help create harmonious male groups and to house whole families, should gorillas need temporary lodging while zoos are renovating.
It also has the most pleasant environment available for males who must be kept in solitary. “It’s a beautiful facility,” Lukas said. “If I was a solitary male, I’d want to live with Jane Dewar.”
Lukas said the SSP is looking for a social setting for Oliver, who, the Dewars agree, needs company.
This year the Dewars began offering tours of the facility, mending fences with formerly hostile neighbors. But generally their lives are sequestered. They spend most of their time with their 11 dogs and 26 cats.
Jane first conceived of Gorilla Haven in 1990; by 2003, Joe was living in his new mountain resort. The Dewars prepared for him with no assurance that they’d get approval by the AZA. It arrived days before Joe did.
“In 13 years, I realized my dream,” Jane Dewar said. “We had the ‘Field of Dreams’ approach: If we build it, they will come.”
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