Fond Monkey Business in France

Charles Lindbergh was much taken with ecological and environmental issues in his later years, and all three of his surviving sons seem to have inherited his enthusiasm for nature, Jon, 44, is an oceanographer in Seattle. Land, 40, is, appropriately enough, a rancher in Montana, The most striking of the three, however, is Scott Lindbergh, 34, a preserver of unusual species in an unusual place:

The Dordogne Valley in southwest France is known for its richly forested hillsides, its spectacular rock formations, its prehistoric cave paintings and -- perhaps most fondly -- for its truffles and foie gras. It also happens to be the home of Peripherique, a six-pound black howler monkey and rogue male, whose treetop wanderings inspired local farmers to name him after the high-speed roadway that encircles Paris. Like all howl er monkeys, black or red, Peripherique has an amazingly overdeveloped set of vocal chords: his mere coo, echoing across the valley like the roar of a hungry lion, has startled many an unwary tourist. Rather more astonishing is the fact that he roams the Dordogne at all. Peripherique's proper habitat is the rain forests of the Amazon River valley half a world away. Yet he and 36 other delicate South American primates flourish in the Dordogne under the permissive care of Scott and Alika Lindbergh.

Dwindling Breeds. The youngest son of Charles Lindbergh, Scott has devoted the past eight years to studying monkeys and looking for ways to preserve dwindling breeds. Scott's Belgian wife, Alika, a former movie actress and novelist, encouraged him to become a naturalist after they met in 1967, when Scott was in his last year of philosophy studies at Cambridge University in England. With Alika, Scott studied animal psychology at the University of Strasbourg, and began turning his attention to a growing brood of rare monkeys that the two were collecting from friends who had tired of them as pets. In 1973 they bought a ramshackle 17th century manor house at Verlhiac, 100 miles northeast of Bordeaux, and turned it into a simian paradise.

The 37 monkeys -- including some woolies, sakis, titis, cotton-head tamarins and marmosets, as well as the howlers -- live in somewhat better style than the Lindberghs, who keep only two of the manor's ten drafty rooms heated. By contrast, their primate wards have roomy indoor cages painted pink (the monkeys' favorite color) that are equipped with real tree branches to perch on, ultraviolet lights to ward off infection, radiators, circulating water, and hammocks for naps. Their diet is lavish. Scott calls it "saturation feeding"; Alika, though promoting it, calls it gas-pillage -- "sheer waste." The animals are served such an abundance of fruits and vegetables that they eat only the choicest parts and toss away the rest -- just as, the Lindberghs say, they would do in the jungle. Scott and Alika have found that many of the monkeys -- normally vegetarian -- turn omnivorous in captivity, needing meat to survive the colder weather and the drastically reduced range of foods in winter.

The cages are just the monkeys' home base. Through an intricate set of escape hatches, tree ladders, ropes and gangways, most of the monkeys have easy access to the world outside, where in good weather they can forage for young shoots, buds, nuts -- anything that strikes their fancy. The Lindberghs have found that a number of species can live amiably together, but they use electrical fences to keep certain individual animals apart. For instance, males of the same species tend to stake out territorial and sexual boundaries that are bitterly defended when crossed. Access to the outside proved lifesaving on at least one occasion, when the red howler population seemed doomed to die of constipation. After two were lost, the Lindberghs sent the remaining five out to forage -- and they came back cured.

Monkey Convicts. Alika has published two books on the couple's life with the primates, and Scott has published scholarly monographs in primatology journals in Switzerland and Japan. Both of them passionately hate conventional zoos. Says Scott: "Monkeys in zoos are like convicts. They have no choice in anything. And choice is essential to keep intelligence alive. Animals are like people. They need to be able to do things for themselves."

Scott concedes that his father could not quite discern what the monkey business was all about. "I couldn't help becoming absorbed in the things my father and mother were interested in," he recalls. "But when I began studying monkeys seriously, he was not at all sure I was doing the right thing. He was a great one for not wasting time. You had to have a definite goal. The goal here can sometimes seem indistinct."

Right now, Scott's goal would almost certainly delight his father. "The ultimate test will come next year," he says, "when I attempt to reintroduce a breeding colony of howlers into the wild." If it succeeds, he predicts enthusiastically, the day will come when man can repopulate jungle areas where hunters and environmental destruction have forced rare primates out. For Alika, the objective is both broader and more modest. "Our role is to watch, to observe and to learn," she says, "to help the animals and to bring men to a more healthy point of view about animals, about their place in the world -- and ours."

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