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True Green Report
Saving the great apes
May 13, 2004
Though you’d think they’d be as concerned about the monkey business of the organization they serve, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is off on a mission to save the world’s remaining great apes from extinction.
As UNEP gets ready to save the great apes, the UN faces increasing criticism for its role in the oil-for-food program and braces against the release of a June 9 book in which employees detail cases of alleged UN corruption.
The latest initiative of UNEP bears witness to a UN agenda that displays more interest in the fur-bearing kingdom than the well being of the homo sapien.
Nonetheless the saving of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans is not only safe ground but a laudable enterprise for a UN which advocates human population control.
Experts predict the outright extinction of some species among the great apes as inevitable on a timeline of within 10 to 15 years. The mammals, the most closely related to humankind are facing a rate of slaughter that cannot be ignored.
As far as the great apes population is concerned, "crisis" is not too strong a description says Richard Leakey, the prominent Kenyan conservationist.
Only two decades ago, the population of the great apes in central Africa was estimated in the millions. Today’s total hovers at the 450,000 mark, and the number is dropping at an alarming rate.
The catalyst factors of the disaster include commercial logging, human encroachment and poaching for bushmeat, which is then sold openly at markets and even exported to countries such as the United Kingdom. But corruption, poverty and bureaucratic lassitude also all play a role in the alarming decrease in the number of the great apes.
Environmental organizations have rushed to broadcast grotesque images of female gorillas, clutching their dead young, slaughtered for meat that is worth pennies to the poachers.
The plight of the great apes has drawn policitians as far away as Toronto with local Councillors like George Mammolitti Africa-bound.
Caught up in controversy over the ongoing oil-for-food scandal, UNEP’s new initiative couldn’t have come at a better time for the UN.
Called the Great Apes Survival Project, it has enlisted an impressive list of commited partner NGOs, including the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund and the World Wildlife Fund. Jane Goodall has been appointed UN special envoy for Great Apes. Dr. Leakey serves as the project’s special advisor.
All are hopeful that the international bureaucracy that has stymied so many other UN projects doesn’t take root in the Great Apes Survival Project.
Mad Cow reality
As the Center for Consumer Freedom points out, "It’s been four months since a single cow in the United States was diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.
"Despite the best efforts of animal rights activists and organic food scaremongers to terrify the public away from the conventional beef supply, American consumers remain unfazed. And considering that the risk of actually contracting mad cow disease is "as close to zero as you can get," our confidence is well justified," states the Center in a recent communiqué.
"If we want to keep feeding Americans affordable meat supplies, the system we have now is effective and safe and smart," the Center for Consumer Freedom told MSNBC.
In National Review, Hudson Institute fellow and commodity-market analyst Dave Juday provided another important reason why there’s nothing to fear: For context, consider that in the aftermath of the discovery of a cow infected with Mad Cow, an intense seven-week effort conducted by U.S. federal and state officials and Canadian food-safety officials identified more than 75,000 animals which could have been associated with the infected cow’s birth herd in Canada. That led to 189 distinct investigations on 51 farms in three states, which further led to 255 suspected at-risk animals, all of which were destroyed, and all of which tested negative for BSE.
PETA names fatties
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) may have landed on the wrong target by tagging Motor Mouth Michael Moore as a fatty.
Moore, handpicked by PETA as one of the "Flab Five" knows how to dish it out. Holier-than-thou, veggie obsessed PETA is recommending that "before he gets too big for his britches, Moore should cut out the stupid white meat and embrace tofu."
The radical animal rights group who would stuff not only their menu but their opinion down the public’s throat, is getting downright nasty in the insult and name calling department.
According to PETA, Luciano Pavarotti is "three tenors rolled into one", West Wing senator John Goodman "looks like he’s been indulging in too many chicken wings", and if American Idol winner "Velvet Teddy Bear" Ruben Studdard doesn’t change noshing habits could become known as the "Velveeta Teddy Bear".
Class, decency and decorum are unknown characteristics among PETA activists, who are as equally insensitive when it comes to the public at large as they are in centering out weight challenged celebs.
"Do you have a chubby chum in need of a refrigerator redux?" PETA asks on its website.
UN adds bamboos to endangered species list
Fresh on the heels of having to save the great apes, the United Nations is turning its attention to saving the wild bamboo their cousins the mountain gorillas feed on.
Indeed, what the UN environmental agency calls the "catastrophic loss" of wild bamboo threatens pandas and mountain gorillas.
"With such iconic wildlife species as the giant panda, mountain gorilla and lemur facing an even-greater struggle for survival because of the catastrophic loss of wild bamboo, the UN environmental agency called for urgent action to halt the "massive forest destruction" threatening this vital habitat," said a release from the UN News Service.
As many as half the world’s 1,200 woody bamboo species may be in danger of extinction, according to the most comprehensive study ever undertaken on the subject.
"This new report highlights how vital it now is for the international community to take a far greater interest in these extraordinary plant species," UNEP Executive Director Director Klaus Toepfer said.
Millions of people use wild bamboo, one of the world’s most ancient life forms, for construction, handicrafts and food. International trade in bamboo products, mostly from cultivated sources, is worth more than $2 billion annually–a trade Toepfer said is worth as much as bananas or beefs from the United States.
The extraordinary life cycle of bamboos–individuals of each species flower once simultaneously every 20 to 100 years and then die–make them especially vulnerable to rapid deforestation that is restricting the areas in which they can survive.
The report identifies unique and endangered species, whose fates are intimately linked with those of bamboos, in every region where bamboos occur. In Asia, these include the red panda and Himalayan black bear, and perhaps best known, the giant panda of which only 600 are left in the wild.
