HELP founder awarded for commitment to orphaned chimpanzees

Aliette Jamart’s untiring commitment to return orphaned chimpanzees back to the wild in Africa, has led to one of the most successful reintroduction programs in conservation history. As a result, she has been awarded the Legion of Honour and ranked as a Chevalier – or Knight – by the Government of France.

Aliette is the founder of HELP-Congo, the Habitat Ecologique et Liberte des Primates sanctuary in the Republic of Congo, which began rescuing orphaned chimpanzees in 1989.

“We are extremely proud of Madame Jamart,” said Doug Cress of PASA, the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance. “Not only did she create a sanctuary in Congo at a time when few existed, she also took the work one step further and proved that chimpanzee reintroductions could work. Today, more than half of our sanctuaries are committed to these programmes and HELP-Congo is still the model we use.”

Unprecedented attempt to revive Indian tiger population

JAIPUR, India – In an unprecedented attempt to revive the tiger population in western India, authorities airlifted a female tiger to a national reserve Friday where it will join a male tiger delivered there last week.

The tigers were carried by Indian Air Force helicopters to Sariska Tiger Reserve in the western state of Rajasthan, whose entire tiger population has been wiped out by poachers in the last five years.

Poaching and a vanishing habitat have savaged Indian tigers, which were believed to number in the tens of thousands a century ago. The tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,400, according to the latest tiger census in February.

Environmentalists hailed the airlifting of the tigers from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, one of India’s most popular places for tourists to see tigers, to Sariska.

Coral Reef Alliance

“Working Together to Keep Coral Reefs Alive” – Nature has long challenged the hardiness of our reef communities but has never quite managed to completely snuff out the entire life force. The ancestors of today’s reef-building corals go back as far as 200 million years and have even survived the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs. Continents may have shifted, sea levels may have risen and fallen but these stalwart reef survivors always managed to regroup and form new communities. At least until now.

In modern times, humans are collectively the coral colonies most effective predators. Holiday makers break bits off as souvenirs, shops sell them as treasures, swimmers stand on them for respite, divers crush them with flippers and boat operators drag anchors across the top of them. On a larger scale, the use of ‘rock-hopping’ nets and bottom-trawling fishing equipment, the grounding of boats, the use of cyanide or dynamite to fish and sediment run-off due to deforestation, are all taking their toll on the well-being of this living eco-system.