tagged w/ Great Apes
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WSPA Animal Rescue
Please watch video: https://www.wspa.org.au/campaigns/orangutan_bos/index.asp?ID=A0808E01
There is a place of refuge for these beautiful creatures, but now it too needs saving.
There is something so tragic about a baby orangutan sitting alone on the rainforest floor. Too scared to even move. Her mother nowhere in sight. The tragedy lies in this baby's chance of survival if left without help.
For every orphaned orangutan that lives through such an ordeal, there are on average three mothers and two infants who have perished. It is vital those fortunate enough to survive are given the care they need to one day return to a remote part of the forest where they belong. Safe. Protected. Home.
Run by Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS), the Nyaru Menteng Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre is the largest primate sanctuary in the world - and a lifeline for the many hundreds of orphaned, injured and abused orangutans who call it home.
With ninety per cent of their natural habitat gone, the threats orangutans face now, and in the future, are terrifying.
https://www.wspa.org.au/campaigns/orangutan_bos/index.asp?ID=A0808E01
Machete attacks on orangutans are common and often fatal for the adults, leaving orphaned infants alive and traumatised. Sadly, some are captured and sold into the pet trade experiencing poor care, disease, injury and psychological trauma which all take their toll on these poor creatures. Many can expect a life of beatings, solitude, confinement and malnutrition.
Amidst this suffering there is hope. Last year, you helped save the Nyaru Menteng Sanctuary from imminent closure. We now need your help to keep it open and running so it can continue its life saving work for orphaned and injured orangutans, and teach them the independence they need to one day return to the wild where they rightfully belong.
Without additional funding, the sanctuary still risks closure. Orangutans could be handed over to the local government for a life of confinement with no prospect of release. Caged and uncared for, we could lose an entire orangutan generation.
WSPA Animal Rescue
Please watch video:... more
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Wildlife trade's dark side:
What do elephants, rhinos, great apes, bears, big cats, sharks, parrots and marine turtles have in common? They're all threatened by the illegal wildlife trade.
View images of the trade in bushmeat that international conservationists are hoping to curb. WARNING: SOME ANIMAL IMAGES ARE GRAPHIC. http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive.aspx?id=WildlifeTrade_2008&navid=3032492&pg=7#WildlifeTrade_2008
Great Apes:
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive.aspx?id=WildlifeTrade_2008&navid=3032492&pg=7#WildlifeTrade_2008
An appetite in China for traditional medicines, and hunger in Africa for protein from apes and other wildlife, dubbed bushmeat.
There’s heavy bushmeat hunting in Central and West Africa, says Russ Mitermeier of Conservation International, and heavy poaching for meat and medicinal uses in Southeast Asia and China.
"In Central Africa alone, about one million tons of wild meat is hunted every year," estimates Liz Bennett of the Wildlife Conservation Society. "That is equivalent to 9 billion 1/4 pound hamburgers each year. It has been estimated that that includes some 28 million bay duikers; 16 million blue duikers; 7.5 million red colobus; 1.8 million red river hogs; 34,000 leopards; 15,000 chimps; and 6,250 lowland gorillas."
A 2008 report by the wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC found that the lack of meat in refugee rations in Tanzania is causing a flourishing illegal trade in bushmeat, including chimpanzees.
Two dozen refugee camps are near wildlife areas, making it easy for poachers. The bushmeat is covertly traded and cooked after dark -- and referred to as 'night time spinach' inside many refugee camps.
'BLACK MARKET' : A Multimedia Interactive: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25677681/Wildlife trade's dark side:
What do elephants, rhinos, great apes, bears, big... more
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PHOTO: An orphaned gorilla curls up with her caregiver.
After the July 2007 killings of endangered mountain gorillas, possibly by people involved in the illegal charcoal trade, a mobile antipoaching force stayed close to gorillas in Virunga National Park. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo's parks authority, ICCN, must keep the animals safe when these guards are needed elsewhere.
Many groups are working to protect the gorillas and support the people fighting for their survival.
WildlifeDirect
Nairobi-based WildlifeDirect, founded by anthropologist Richard Leakey, helps outfit wildlife rangers in Virunga National Park and supplement their government salaries. The group's website hosts blogs where rangers and others post news and pictures from the field. Online donors can specify where their funds go—for patrol rations, medical kits, or support for the families of rangers killed on duty.
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
Founded by the gorilla researcher murdered in 1985, this organization helps care for young gorillas like the one whose mother was killed in July.
Frankfurt Zoological Society
FZS has trained and equipped hundreds of rangers; it also provides aircraft to help the ICCN monitor gorillas and direct antipoaching forces from the air.
International Gorilla Conservation Program
This coalition works with the governments of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda.
Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project
Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project field vets make routine health visits to habituated gorilla groups in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in partnership with park rangers, guides, patrols, monitoring agents, and scientists from various organizations.
Wildlife Conservation Society
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is one of the only organizations in the world working to protect all four gorilla subspecies—each of which is threatened by extinction. For nearly half a century the WCS has initiated and supported gorilla research and conservation projects throughout Africa.
Zoological Society of London
In addition to helping supplement rangers' salaries, the ZSL works with D.R. Congo's park authority to help manage Virunga National Park as a whole.
PHOTO: An orphaned gorilla curls up with her caregiver.
After the July 2007... more
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The orang-utan could be the first great ape to become extinct unless urgent and extraordinary action is taken to protect the species from human encroachment.
A new study has revealed that the orang-utan population in Indonesia and Malaysia has declined at an alarming rate since 2004. In the Central Kalimantan jungle on Borneo, the orang-utan population has fallen from 31,300 in 2004 to 20,000. This means, that orang-utans could be extinct there by 2011.
The main reasons for this development are illegal logging and the expansion of palm oil plantation in the area. Furthermore, orang-utans are hunted for food and trade.
Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation UK, said: "The rate of decline is increasing, and unless something is done, the wild orang-utan is on a quick spiral towards extinction."The orang-utan could be the first great ape to become extinct unless urgent and... more
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Virunga National Park -- Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and chairman of the Primate Specialist Group of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. “If we can’t stop these attacks, our closest living relatives will disappear from the planet.”
Ndeze, as park rangers named him, survived the July 22 attack by unknown assailants on the Rugendo gorilla group that killed Senkwekwe, the dominant silverback, and three adult females (another adult female is missing and presumed dead). Ndeze was carried by his brother from the slaughter; both were later found by members of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program and Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN). They had to tranquilize the brother to rescue the infant, who would have died from lack of care.
Ndeze is now being cared for at a primate rehabilitation center in Goma, Congo, called the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International rehabilitation center. He joined another infant orphaned six weeks earlier in an attack on a different group in the park that killed another
adult female.
Conservation International has agreed to provide money from its Primate Action Fund foradditional guards in Virunga to protect the mountain gorillas, which until the recent attacks had been a rare success story for the great apes of Africa, whose numbers have been falling elsewhere across the continent by Ebola virus, illegal trade and deforestation.
* Find how you can help save these gentle giants, please visit these organizations dedicated to saving this incredible species.
www.iccnrdc.cd/
www.wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/gorilladoctors
http://gorilla.wildlifedirect.org/2008/05/16/video-tshiaberimu-gorillas/
http://getinvolved.conservation.org/site/PageServer?pagename=gorillavideo
http://www.wcs.org/international/Africa/gorilla
http://www.igcp.org/gorillas/gorillas.htm
http://mgvp.32ad.com/default.aspx
http://gorilla.wildlifedirect.org/2008/05/16/video-tshiaberimu-gorillas/
http://www.gorillas.org/
Virunga National Park -- Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation... more
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