Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Primate spotting: a new brand of eco-tourism?
A scientist who claims the world record for spotting the most types of primates wants more challengers — via a new brand of eco-tourism that might stave off extinction for many apes, monkeys and lemurs.
Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) primate specialist group, reckons he has seen 350 out of 634 known species and sub-species of primate in the wild.
“There are another couple of people in the running but I think that’s the highest,” Mittermeier, born in 1949, told me of his list compiled over about four decades of work often in the world’s tropical forests.
He said that he was planning to launch a website with the lists of the top experts’ sightings.
Can Indiana Jones help save tigers?
Indiana Jones and the World Bank sound like an odd couple to get anything done (“Quick, shoot that robber!” “Wait, we have to do a two-year feasibility study first!”) but are part of a new alliance trying to save the world’s tigers. (Read my colleague Leslie Wroughton’s fine story here)
Will it work? Tigers are under threat from loss of prey and habitats and a black market in tiger skins and bones.
