Word: vedder
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...Vedder has seen it all a thousand times before. Gazing into a jungle clearing, she watches as a lumbering group of gorillas approaches. Brushing through rain-forest shrubs, knuckle-walking past a strangler fig, they push their way into the open. While the adults forage, the juveniles climb the trunk of a fallen tree and play king of the mountain. From somewhere above, hornbills and blue monkeys sound an alarm...
Familiar as the scene is, Vedder--a conservationist who began studying gorillas in Rwanda in 1978 with Dian Fossey--can't help noticing that it's also a bit surreal. For one thing, she's standing behind a wall of thick, protective glass. For another, she is not actually visiting the gorillas' home range; rather, they're visiting hers. Just to the west, after all, stands Yankee Stadium. Next to that is a subway station for the IRT line that runs straight into Manhattan...
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...
...civil wars that have killed or dislocated millions of Central Africans in the past decade have also made gorillas more vulnerable to depredations. "Even now," says Amy Vedder of the Wildlife Conservation Society, "significant portions of gorilla habitat are unreachable by conservation forces because of the continued fighting. Until that stops, we won't even know what we've lost...
...established an intensity that lasted well into the second hour of play. "I haven't felt that much energy since a Gwar show back in the 80s," cried a fellow concert-goer. Indeed, the Crowes had a distinctively non-Orpheum crowd shaking like Salt 'n Pepa, moshing like Eddie Vedder and grooving like Beck on a runaway turntable. Even the Jerry Garcia look-alikes were moving. Scary, yes. Surprising, no. The Crowes and their distinctive, hard edge rock and roll strike a beat that is hard to deny...