Chimpanzee Rescue Changing The Future For Endangered Wildlife

Chimpanzee Rescue introduces readers to our closest relatives: the well-known chimpanzee and its cousin, the rare bonobo. These two African great apes share more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans. Able to make and use tools and to communicate by signs, capable of both friendship and war, they are so much like humans that some scientists are studying them for clues to how our own distant ancestors may have lived and behaved. Sadly, the survival of these fascinating creatures is threatened as human populations increase, bringing conflict and disease, and using up the forests on which chimpanzees and bonobos depend. They are also falling prey to hunters who sell "bushmeat" to urban restaurants, where it is served up as a costly delicacy. Some experts predict that all the great apes will be extinct within our lifetime. But not everyone accepts this prognosis. Chimpanzee Rescue profiles several of the projects and people dedicated to helping chimps and bonobos survive. Readers will meet a biologist who brokered a deal to preserve hunt-free habitat for the chimpanzees of Gabon, a woman who launched the first successful project to return captive chimps to the wild, and a chimp specialist who planted a corridor of trees to free an isolated chimp community from its forest prison. They will visit a forest in Uganda where chimps and humans live side-by-side, a bonobo preserve in Congo where river patrols confront armed poachers, and a sanctuary in Florida for chimps rescued from biomedical research.Bow, Patricia is the author of 'Chimpanzee Rescue Changing The Future For Endangered Wildlife', published 2004 under ISBN 9781552979099 and ISBN 1552979091.