A partnership for gorilla protection with the Ministry for Ecology
Marking the United Nations International Year of the Gorilla, the FGEF took part in a “Gorilla Protection Day” organised by the Ministry for Ecology at the National Natural History Museum (MNHN) in Paris, on Saturday 5 December 2009. The FGEF attended the event with the Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs, the National Natural History Museum, the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), UNESCO, the Great Apes Conservation Project and the Jane Goodall Institute.
Gorilla Protection Day was a general public event organised to coincide with the end of the International Year of the Gorilla (www.YOG2009.org), the Copenhagen climate change summit and start of International Biodiversity Year in 2010.
The event was organised with three objectives:
- To raise public awareness of the need to protect the last surviving gorillas and their ecosystem, the tropical forests of Central Africa, which, with the Amazon, are the “green lungs” of our planet.
- To explain to the public the chain of cause and effect whereby the extinction or survival of a species determines the future of biodiversity both locally and globally.
- To promote programmes for the conservation of great apes in Central Africa, and especially the action plan for gorillas under the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species (CMS).
Programme
The programme of the event included interactive shows and documentary film projections in the main evolution gallery auditorium and in the National Natural History Museum’s main amphitheatre.
Throughout the day, an educational kit on great apes and their habitat was presented, produced with FGEF support under its small-scale initiatives programme, as well as the Atlas of Great Apes.
The Atlas of Great Apes
Published in 2009, the French version of this Atlas is the fruit of a collaborative programme involving several partners, in which the FGEF took charge of updating and translating the texts with financial support from the International Agency for the Development of Environmental Information in Gabon.The Atlas offers a clearly presented, well-documented and abundantly illustrated description of the different species of great apes, using highly readable language for a broad readership. Chapters are also devoted to each country in the range of the great apes. The Atlas is unique in describing the threats in each country and actions undertaken, with an up-to-date map showing the distribution of great apes in each one. The original English-language version of the Atlas was published in 2005.
The French version of the Atlas was published in 2009, with support from the FGEF and the Cameroon Forests and Wildlife Ministry, from UNESCO, which took charge of printing and from the National Natural History Museum, which coordinated scientific validation by a group of French primatologists and editing.
The editorial committee
Ministère de l’écologie, de l’énergie, du développement durable et de la mer ; Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea
Ministère des affaires étrangères et européennes Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle National Natural History Museum
Fonds français pour l’environnement mondial French Global Environment Facility
Projet pour la conservation des grands singes Great Apes Conservation Project
UNESCO- programme MAB « l’homme et la biosphère » UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme
Secrétariat de la Convention de Bonn Secretariat of the Bonn Convention
Institut Jane Goodall Jane Goodall Institute