This is what extinction could sound like

This is a pivotal moment for the future of our gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans. Help us raise $100,000 to secure a future for great apes and other wildlife. Give $5 or more today. Dear Friend of Wildlife, It starts with the loud buzzing of saws. Then comes a deafening crack, and a thunderous crash that ripples through the forest. Then... silence. That's the sound of a rainforest being demolished, one tree at a time. For gorillas, orangutans, and chimps, it is the sound of complete destruction: their homes, their food supply, their families, their lives. It's a sound great apes have learned to fear. The forests of Africa and Asia that have been home to great apes for millennia are disappearing. If we hope to save our closest cousins from vanishing along with them we cannot afford to wait. Not with their very survival on the line. WCS is ramping up its efforts to protect these intelligent primates, but it's your support that's going to make it happen. Help us reach our $100,000 goal for great apes. Even $5 can have an impact. Make a tax-deductible contribution today >> Our closest relatives in the wild are similar to us in so many ways, from their sly sense of humor to the intense love of a mother cradling her child. Chimps even tickle each other and laugh as they play! The intelligence you see in the face of a great ape is real – and sadly, so is the fear. When danger from hunters, loggers, or miners intensifies, their behavior visibly changes. The apes become guarded and wary, and avoid areas where they might encounter humans. Those apes aren't wrong. They wouldn't be in the critical state they are if it weren't for humans as they have few natural predators. But people like you and I can make a better name for our species. WCS staff have identified key habitats that, if protected from development and hunting, can give all great apes, including rare subspecies of gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans a path to survival. Places such as: Takamanda-Mone Forest, a vital landscape in Cameroon for protecting the critically endangered Cross River gorilla, of which only about 300 remain in the wild; Mai Tatu and the Ituri Forest, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, home to 6,000 eastern chimpanzees – the largest remaining population in the wild; Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, which is home to the most endangered sub-species of orangutan – less than 4,500 remain; Salonga National Park, which is the most important remaining stronghold for bonobos, currently being hunted to the brink of extinction for the bushmeat trade; and Kahuzi Biega National Park, where we protect a few hundred Grauer’s gorillas, which is unfortunately one of the largest remaining populations of the subspecies. Saving these and many other populations of great apes is what we stand to gain. And I, for one, am far more interested in contemplating that than what we stand to lose. Time is running out before the year ends. Help us raise $100,000 to save great apes and other wildlife by December 31. Your gift could have a truly amazing legacy – ensuring the survival of the last of the beautiful, intelligent great apes remaining in the wild. And while the apes can't thank you, I certainly will. Sincerely, Liz Bennett Vice President, Species Conservation Wildlife Conservation Society

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