Wildlife Conservation
In my children's lifetimes, I believe gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans ( 猩猩 ) will all become extinct in the wild. So the question we have to ask ourselves is this: do we
want our children to see only in zoos what used to exist in the real world? It is the great apes that will disappear first, because there are so few of them left, and because they're so vulnerable to changes in their habitats.
Many of the threats to these animals result from a global economy and not local pressures. The threat to the orangutans in Indonesia, for example, is largely a result of deforestation and the risks to apes and chimpanzees in Africa result from the timber
trade and the demand for bush-meat. The two work together: logging opens up the forest, which means that the bush-meat can be got out fast, to Kinshasa or to London.
If we want to avoid the disaster, people in developed
countries will have to take a global perspective and accept responsibility for the damage export crops, such as timber, coffee, cut flowers or even green beans, do to the environment. The challenge is to avoid simply imposing