‘The problem is it’s extremely hard to find timber that’s most attractive for logging, which is not also the habitat of a whole bunch of threatened species.’
On Sunday, London’s Chester Zoo gained a new inhabitant. At about noon that day, a baby Bornean orangutan came into the world and both mother and child are reported to be doing well.
We first went to Churchill, Canada, to see its famous polar bears, whose life was being threatened by the vagaries of a civilization. We went to touch the space of their frontier, because we knew that their continued presence on earth represents a critical buoy to our future.
A world without elephants, even a world with severely reduced populations only incites more violence and convulsions across the entire body of the African and Asian continent.
Today, many zoos promote the protection of biodiversity as a significant part of their mission. As conservation “arks” for endangered species and, increasingly, as leaders in field conservation projects such as the reintroduction of captive-born animals to the wild, they’re preparing to play an even more significant role in the effort to save species in this century.