The Last Great Ape

by Ofir Drori and David McDannald

Read an Excerpt

At the heart of The Last Great Ape is Future, the chimp who sent a thousand wildlife traffickers to jail.

Tied up in a kitchen in Mbong-Mbang, Cameroon

Ofir Drori, searching the jungle of Cameroon for heroes fighting on the front lines of extinction, finds a thriving animal trade and an orphaned chimp tied in poacher’s kitchen. The poacher, pictured in colorful clothes, does not grasp the chimp’s emotional complexity as he offers the chimp for sale for $150.
The poacher & his merchandise.

Ofir returns the following day with a copy of the Cameroonian constitution and tells the poacher to read the law stating that possession of class A endangered species is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. He informs the poachers that a vehicle is on its way to arrest them–a bluff. Ofir says may be able to help them avoid arrest if they give him the chimp. They do.
Future, happy and healthy, before his relocation to a jungle sanctuary.

The animal sanctuary in the capital tells Ofir they will not take the chimp, so he decides to raise Future himself. .The chimp’s rescue sparks the founding of Ofir’s organization, The Last Great Ape, now part of the Eagle Network, which sent more than a thousand wildlife traffickers and ivory dealers to jail.

Before Ofir became an activist, he was a traveler.

Isaac Ololkupai, Maasai

As a young man, Ofir travels on foot through Kenya into Maasai territory, where he meets Isaac, who has chosen to live near his father and to embrace his culture after leaving a lucrative job with a safari lodge.
Turkana girl, Kenya

Ofir treks the length of Lake Turkana, through war-torn territory, where a man tells him he is the first outsider to come through in thirteen years. Further north he meets a Catholic priest who is encouraging the Turkana to fish by the collective methods of old. Father Albert tells Ofir he must “find a place to did so that a seed can grow.”

Ofir travels with a horse named Konjo along the Gibe River, Ethiopia.
Ofir loses Konjo to a mountainside and finds himself lost and without food.
After eating river algae and fat from a dead hippo in order to survive, he manages to climb out of the river valley many days later.

Ofir vows to begin telling the stories of the people he meets as he travels to the war zones of West Africa.

Muhktar from Sierra Leone

Ofir documents the spirit of Sierra Leoneans who have suffered inconceivable atrocities. While in Freetown, the rebel army fights to within miles of the city. A slaughter is imminent. Ofir cannot find a way out of the capital. British paratroopers arrive and push the rebels back. His first article is published in Teva Hadvarim, the Israeli equivalent of National Geographic.
Archie, a Liberian child soldier

Archie saw his family killed through a crack in a door in Liberia. He was abducted into a rebel army at the age of nine and forced to kill and to laugh when he did. This photograph was taken when he was fourteen, after the war. Archie says he has two hearts, a good heart and a bad heart. “One heart says, ‘Stop, Stop,’ and the other heart says, ‘You can’t stop.’”

The search for a cause eventually leads to Cameroon. When Ofir discovers that no one is fighting to disprove Jane Goodall’s dark prophesy that apes in the wild will soon be extinct, he decides, with his extensive knowledge of Africa, that he the power to make a difference. Thus, he sees it as his responsibility. LAGA is born to begin the fight against wildlife traffickers and ivory dealers with heart-pounding, espionage-style raids. Under Ofir’s leadership, LAGA and its sister branches in countries throughout Africa in The Eagle Network, have been responsible for arrests at a rate of one every other day for nearly 20 years.