When acclaimed author Deni Béchard learned of the last living bonobos - matriarchal great apes which are, alongside chimpanzees, our closest relatives - he was astonished. How could we accept the disappearance of this majestic species, along with the rainforest it calls home? Determined not to sit by and do nothing, Béchard began investigating the problems facing the bonobos - industrial and urban encroachment, aggressive resource extraction by foreign comapnies, the civil war and genocide which had wreaked havoc on the Congo intermittently or more than a century, the trade in bush-meat - and in the process discovered one small organization, the Bonobo Conservation Institute, which had done more to save the bonobos than many much larger organizations. In BCI Béchard recognized a unique post-colonial model for conservation initiatives which, if replicated, might provide one of the only hopes for making the world a far better and more equitable place.

Part polemic, part travelogue, part natural history, Bonobo Inc. offers a moving story of how a few committed people can affect great and lasting change, while point out the path which may allow us to emulate them.

Deni Béchard's first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. His articles, stories, and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers, including the National Post, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He has done freelance reporting from northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and he has lived in over 30 countries. When he's not travelling, he divides his time between Montreal, Québec, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Deni Béchard's profile page