9781422279144

rangers had been trying to learn why so many trees were being cut down. The charcoal traders feared that they would lose money if rangers prevented them from harvesting the hardwood. They killed the gorillas as an ominous message to the rangers to stop meddling. A Wider Problem T he world’s apes and monkeys don’t have to live in war- torn zones to be at risk. Around the globe—including in the United States—these primate groups are vulnerable to a wide variety of dangers. Those dangers include being poached for meat, forced out of their homes due to habitat loss, used for medical testing, or even sold as pets to peo- ple who are not equipped to care for them properly. Some scientists and conservationists believe we are harming these animals so much that in the future they might not exist in the wild at all. About 100 years ago, there were at least a million chimpanzees in the world, for exam- ple, but today there are just an estimated 300,000, and the threats to their survival are only increasing. Sometimes the news is even worse. Every two years, the primate specialist group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publishes a report titled

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