Word: vietnamize
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...Millennials, climate change is emerging as the defining issue of their time, just as civil rights or Vietnam might have been for the generation before. "This is a new generation that sees itself at the forefront of a great movement, just like the greatest movements of the past," says Tolkan. With health care, Iraq and the economy all jostling for voters' attention, it remains to be seen whether climate change - still an amorphous threat to most Americans - can seize center stage, but Washington should know that there is a growing core of young activists out there who care about nothing...
...major problem is habitat erosion. In Vietnam, for example, which is home to four of the 25 most endangered species, habitat loss as a result of development and persistent hunting for food, medicine and animal skins has reduced the populations of species like the golden-headed langur from thousands of animals in the middle of last century to only 65 today. "The more we look at it, the worse the picture seems to get," says Ben Rawson, a Hanoi-based primatologist with Conservation International (CI), another sponsor of the recent report. Conducting primate surveys in the region, he says...
Therein lies another major problem: Carrying out extensive surveys on animals that have learned to hide from humans isn't cheap. Though the conservation movement in Vietnam isn't exactly red-hot, scientists don't have the cold hard cash to fund one either. Local conservation groups can't afford to commit the time and staff needed for intensive inspections of far-flung forest nooks where a few dozen nocturnal tree-dwelling creatures might be hanging out. And in many primate conservation hot spots around the world - mostly developing countries with limited resources - the health and safety of humans naturally...
...result, all four of Vietnam's Top 25 endangered primates have been "adopted" by foreign organizations. Groups like the Endangered Primate Rescue Center, founded largely on foreign initiative, help keep track of primate populations and train local scientists how to protect them. And while it may foster a habit of donor dependency, the collaboration between local preservation groups and NGOs pays off. One Vietnamese specialist whom Rawson trained has helped record the country's largest single group of grey-shanked douc langurs, a gorgeous monkey with an orange face and white beard that lives in the highlands of central Vietnam...
...that kind of bargain with the world's governments if they hope to preserve threatened species. But the face-off between environment and development has been a perennial battle - and perhaps, for primate conservationists, an unwinnable one - given that the countries that are home to highly endangered primates, like Vietnam, are also home to developing economies. That's a discouraging reality for primatologists and for the grey-shanked douc, whose forest habitat in Vietnam is being destroyed at the rate of the 10,000 hectares per year to make way for logging and agriculture. "When it comes to a choice...