Photo by Nick Step, Flickr
Famous conservationist Jane Goodall took the microphone during the recent Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development to give a voice to the chimpanzees that she loves so dearly. After chanting what she said was chimpanzee-speak for “please help,” Goodall informed the the delegates in attendance about the environmental organization, Avoided Deforestation Partners.
Goodall spoke of the encroaching deforestation that’s affecting Tanzania’s Gombe National Park, the place where she first began her work with the chimps all those years ago. Where once chimpanzees in the region numbered into the millions, there are now only about 170,000 to 300,000 left in the wild, making them an endangered species.
Goodall pointed the finger at both the desperate poverty in the region and the growing commercial demands of the developed world, and also noted that the population boom was another factor in the region’s increasing deforestation.
