UN Says it Needs Aid for Great Apes

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=716&e=7&u=/ap/20031128/ap_on_sc/un_saving_apes

<snip>PARIS - Poachers shoot them. Smugglers sell their babies as exotic pets. Illegal loggers wipe out the rain forests where they live. And civil wars drive them away.



The great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — are in great danger, the United Nations (news - web sites) says. On Friday, the U.N.'s environment and cultural agencies closed a meeting in Paris on how to protect the closest relative to humans in the animal world.


The talks in Paris drew representatives from 18 countries for what organizers said was the most wide-ranging meeting ever on endangered great apes. Over three days, they worked out a global strategy to prevent poaching and illegal trade, while encouraging education and ecotourism.

The agencies say they urgently need at least $25 million to save the apes from the threat of extinction.

"We may need a much larger sum, certainly in the hundreds of millions, if we're going to guarantee saving these animals," said Robert Hepworth of the United Nations Environment Program.

The great apes share more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans.

"If we can't save these species which are so close to us ... do we have very much hope with some of the other particularly threatened species and ecosystems," Hepworth said.


A link to the Great Apes Survival Project...
http://www.unep.org/grasp/

[JailBush]

1. Can you imagine George W. Bush giving permission to use his

image in a campaign designed to protect chimpanzees - complete with the popular cartoon image from The Guardian?

[KDLarsen]

4. Hah...

.. was just thinking that same thought.

On the other hand, I wonder if Dubya would take some aid as well? After all, he is most likely the closest relative to the great apes.

[camero]

6. I think the US did give some funds

Maybe Bush thought we were funding the "Grape Apes."

[belab13]

2. when the world is going to hell in a hand basket, the environment and

the living things that occupy it are the last to be considered. very depressing to think we may lose these animals. f**king greedy humans are taking the whole planet down with them.

[Lorien]

7. We have a moral responsibilty

to protect them. We should be acting as stewards of the earth, not destroyers. Even my fundie mom agrees with me on that point; she cites specific passages in the Bible and says that those who would allow for the extinction of a species show utter contempt for God. I agree.

[salin]

3. never mind

decided not to make fun of the 'apes' (as in... who might those 'great apes' be...) It just detracts from the story.

[salinen]

5. I am proud

to be a relative of the great Apes. We decended from them, so they are our grandparents.