Green Options

After writing an article last week on if the UN was making a mistake in their plans for gorilla conservation, titled “Are Gorillas Doomed, Is the UN Making a Huge Mistake,” I got a lot of great feedback from readers. In the article I pointed out some of the things that we as individuals can do to help gorillas. Reader, naturalist, and artist Dave Derrick commented that there is an art for gorillas program on the Year of the Gorilla 2009 Website (http://www.yog2009.org) that he is a part of. Special thanks to Dave for pointing this out. You can check out Dave’s Artwork who’s proceeds go to gorilla conservation here. The art for gorilla program also has some fine photographic prints available for sale.

For years and years, humans considered themselves the one and only makers of tools. Homo sapien literally means “wise man” because we were so intelligent that it was us humans, and us humans alone, who could even have the brain capacity to create a tool. It was considered the key feature of the genus Homo.

Well, that was until people actually decided to carefully look at other animal’s social behavior. It was not until the mid to late 1900’s that people realized “oops us humans are not the only ones to use tools.” Primatologists discovered chimpanzees creating tools for fishing termites out of their mounds, and stones for crushing nuts from their hard shell. Other researchers discovered that gorillas make beds from foliage, as well as sponges out of chewed up leaves.

A report released Wednesday from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) predicts an 80% population decline of the most common type of gorilla, the Western Gorilla, from 1980 levels by 2046. The 2007 Red List of Threatened Species finds "commercial hunting and outbreaks of the Ebola virus have virtually extirpated gorillas from a great deal of otherwise intact forest" where they were previously thought to thrive.

"What’s immediately needed if we are to halt the

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