Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
September 23, 2010

Unlike every other of the world's great apes-the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan-saving the bonobo means focusing conservation efforts on a single nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While such a fact would seem to simplify conservation, according to the director of the Bonobo and Congolese Biodiversity Initiative (BCBI), Gay Reinartz, it in fact complicates it: after decades of one of world's brutal civil wars, the DRC remains among the world's most left-behind nations. Widespread poverty, violence, politically instability, corruption, and lack of basic infrastructure have left the Congolese people in desperate straits.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0923-hance_reinartz.html

23/09/2010
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A new gibbon species have been discovered by researchers, led by Christian Roos, from the German Primate Center (Deutschen Primatenzentrums) and was published on Vietnamese Journal of Primatology. The northern buffed-cheeked gibbons (Nomascus annamensis) live in the rainforests of Annamite Mountains, situated around Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The northern buffed-cheeked gibbons were once thought to be the yellow-cheeked gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae) but vocalization and genetic research prove that both are distinct species.

http://primatology.net/2010/09/22/new-gibbon-species-discovered/

22/09/2010
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The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is pleased to announce the publication of a new report.

 Development AND Gorillas?

Assessing fifteen years of integrated conservation and development in south-western Uganda

Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga Gorilla National Parks are extremely important biodiversity areas due to their populations of the highly endangered mountain gorilla. Gazettement of the parks in 1991 caused high levels of conflict and resistance from the surrounding communities, seriously threatening the ability of the protected area authority to manage the parks. This report summarises the findings of a study into a range of ‘integrated conservation and development' strategies in Bwindi and Mgahinga, and their effectiveness in reconciling biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development interests.

21/09/2010
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mongabay.com

September 19, 2010

Plantations on peatlands will no longer be supported by the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM), a framework for industrialized countries
to reduce their emissions via projects in developing countries,
reports Wetlands International.

The decision, which came last Friday during the executive board
meeting, will bar biofuel plantations established on peatlands from
earning carbon credits that could then be sold to industrialized
countries to "offset" emissions. The concern is that under the CDM,
carbon finance is used to perversely subsidize conversion of
carbon-dense peatlands for oil palm plantations, a process that
generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions, thereby undermining
any potential carbon dioxide savings from use of palm oil-based
biodiesel.

 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0919-cdm_oil_palm_peat.html

19/09/2010
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It's not easy to be a gibbon: although one of the most acrobatic, fast, and marvelously loud of the world's primates, the gibbon remains largely unknown to the global public and far less studied than the world's more 'popular' apes. This lack of public awareness, scientific knowledge, and, thereby, conservation funding combined with threats from habitat loss to hunting to the pet trade have pushed seven gibbon species, known as 'crested', to the edge of extinction according to scientists attending the 23rd Congress of the International Primatological Society. 

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0919-hance_gibbons.html

19/09/2010
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Grave threat to chimps population in Sierra Leone

FREETOWN - Local wildlife experts in Sierra Leone on Thursday
highlighted what they called a "grave threat to the chimps population"
in the west African state.

At a meeting to develop a comprehensive conservation action plan for
chimpanzees in the country, the office of the director-general of the
ministry of agriculture warned that "the estimated 5,000 chimp
population is under grave threat mainly due to the desire of local rural
communities for bush meat."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gWRKDrfE_dpjAQPhenglKjeZ7dVw

16/09/2010
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