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Why is GAFI needed Click
an ape to learn about the current status and threats Why do we need to save great apes
The great apes are our kin. Like us they are self-aware and have cultures, tools, ploitics and medicines. They can learn to use sign language and have conversations with people and with each other. Sadly, however, we have not treated them with the respect they deserve, and their numbers are now declining, the victims of logging, disease, loss of habitat, capture and hunting. Nevertheless there are signs of hope. In some places, governments have taken the lead in conservation efforts, often co-operating across national frontiers. It has become increasingly clear that whoever initiates actions be it central governments, local governments, international non-government organisations, or individual citizens, local communities need to be involved. It is they who live with the great apes, and it is they who need to have the incentives- such as sharing in revenues from tourism - to conserve them.
Great apes cannot be conserved for free. The Great Apes Survival Project ….can help by mobilizing resources. But this is only part of the answer, and other good ideas on how to protect the great apes are also needed. We need ordinary people in their millions to love and protect them. We need governments and companies to ‘adopt’ them and the places where they live. We need to turn the tide of extinction that threatens our nearest living relatives. KOFI A. ANNAN Reproduced with kind permission from World Atlas of Great Apes and their conservation Current Distribution:
Click an ape to learn about the current status and threats •
Gorillas • Chimps
• Orangutans • Bonobos |
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No-one
can sum up the reasons why we should save great apes better than Kofi
Annan. This is his foreword to the ‘World Atlas of Great Apes
and their Survival’.
Often
people treat great apes better when they treat each other better, as
a result of education, good governance and reduced poverty. But saving
the great apes is also about saving people. By conserving the great
apes we can also protect the livelihoods of the many people who rely
on forests for food, clean water and much else. Indeed the fate of great
apes has both practical and symbolic implications for the ability of
human beings to move to a sustainable future.