Word: gorillaed
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...this artful fakery is the centerpiece of the zoo's new Congo Gorilla Forest, scheduled to open this week. The $43 million exhibit will provide a homey setting for at least 19 gorillas, not to mention small populations of okapi, red river hogs, mandrills, wolf monkeys and about 70 other exotic species. The exhibit is intended not only to attract visitors but also to direct their attention--and their dollars--toward the plight of the animals' native habitat in the Congo basin, an area about the size of Western Europe that finds itself under relentless assault from loggers, poachers...
Whether the exhibit will achieve that political and economic mission is uncertain. Even before it opens, however, its other mission--providing a sanctuary where gorillas can live as they were intended to--is being fulfilled. "It's such a pleasure," says Vedder, who serves as director of Africa programs for New York's Wildlife Conservation Society, "to see gorillas doing gorilla things...
...recent years, the world has become a brutally hard place to be a gorilla. Although there are still more than 130,000 gorillas in the Congo basin, they are being killed and crowded out at an alarming rate. By one estimate, 800 gorillas in Cameroon ended up as "bush meat" last year...
While a few great apes live in luxury in the new Congo Gorilla Forest in the Bronx, many of their wild relatives are being killed or crowded out of their homelands in Africa. The chief threats to their survival are threefold...
HUNTING So-called bush meat, which includes gorilla flesh, has long been an important part of local diets. But as the human population grows and new roads make it easier to ship gorilla meat to the cities, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. There are laws against killing gorillas for any reason, but enforcement is spotty...