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“Good news for gorillas. Here’s how you can help save other primates”

Saturday, August 9, 2008
Posted in Environment Wildlife | Tagged Environment, Wildlife

We were heartened this week by news of healthy gorilla populations in the Congo. As we at CI know through our work to protect gorillas at the Tayna Gorilla Reserve, population increases are rare and important successes to celebrate.

But we are also faced with the staggering news that 50% of all primates are on a path toward extinction. CI just released data from the first comprehensive review in five years of the world’s 634 kinds of primates:

• In the Asian region, more than 70 percent of primates are threatened.
• In Central and South America, 39 percent of the primates are in danger.
• Africa and Madagascar’s results were 37 and 41 percent, respectively.

Much of this is due to habitat destruction - a threat that’s caused by humans and thus can be stopped by humans. If we don’t take action - and act quickly - to protect forests, we all might be responsible for the extinction of a spider monkey, a cotton-top tamarin or a gorilla.

This was one of many topics discussed during our live chat with mammalogist Mike Hoffmann Tuesday. If you weren’t able to join the chat, you can check out the full transcript here.

Some of our favorite questions were …

From Carolyn: What is the single most important thing an individual or family can do to help save primates worldwide?

From Tyme: What is the natural range of most primates? Can they thrive in captivity — free ranging — where that natural range is provided?

From Bob: What can be done to protect the newly discovered 125,000 western lowland gorillas in the Republic of the Congo?

From Jaime: Compared to other kinds of animals, would you say that primates are the most sensitive to human presence and disturbance of their habitat?

Find all the answers here and then become part of the solution. You can help save gorillas and other primates just by learning about them. Go to http://www.conservation.org/primatenews for all the primate facts and figures you can handle. You can also pack a bag and go to the places where primates live - just to see what’s going on and contribute to ecotourism initiatives.

And you can always make a contribution to Conservation International to help fund our species protection work. Every dollar counts. And with individual contributions like yours, we’ve discovered more than 500 species in 21 years, and we’ve helped protect and save even more.