It all started in the heart of Africa and they told us about it in a piece of Africa in Valencia
A heart that passionately attracted women committed to nature, one English and one Spanish. Both 42 years apart fighting with indomitable spirit to change the destiny of ape species in serious danger of extinction. Now they have explained it to us with the BIOPARC Foundation in the heart of Valencia.
Friday, May 18, 2012. Jane Goodall, the 78-year-old ethologist Recognized worldwide with countless distinctions, she began her career at the age of 23 traveling to Kenya. Later, she was assigned to Tanzania with the risky mission of investigating wild chimpanzees in the area for the first time. The results of your exhaustive field investigations revolutionized the scientific community and they fascinated the entire world. Your perseverance, intuition, empathy and observation skills allowed to shed light on the hitherto unknown world of chimpanzees, revealing their instrumental behavior, social structure, foraging, hunting, war between groups, altruism, dominance, breeding, cannibalism, adoption, among many other aspects. She has been awarded more than 100 international awards, including the Prince of Asturias Research Award and named United Nations “Messenger of Peace”, is supported by 40 years of research in Gombe.
Jane Goodall He visited Valencia for the first time and was at BIOPARC. In these difficult moments he exhibited his “Reasons for hope” and stood out as a very important one, the resistance of nature, the great capacity for regeneration of habitat and species that were almost extinct when we helped them a little. Another woman, a Spanish woman, gave us a good example of this: Ainare Idoiaga.
Ainare is part of a group of young Spanish professionals, biologists or veterinarians, heirs to the tradition started by Jane Goodall.
In his conference he explained to us the “Project Dril”, developed by the Pandrillus Foundation, in which the BIOPARC Foundation collaborates. Drills in the 80s were a species considered extinct and thanks to the work of people like Ainare, the path to salvation is found. The pressure of the human species is the main cause of environmental deterioration and the disappearance of a multitude of animal species, but through awareness, we still have time to change and preserve the Earth. Conservation actions such as the one presented yesterday at Bioparc are a door to hope, as it is the first time that drills will be reintroduced into their natural habitat, essential work to guarantee the survival of this emblematic primate. A fact that confirms that things are changing is the participation of local populations and political leaders in understanding that the protection of nature is vital and a benefit for everyone.
Currently there is only a population of about 3.000 drills in the world and the BIOPARC Foundation has contributed since 2009 to this reintroduction project of 130 of these primates at the Afi Mountains Sanctuary in Nigeria.
But also, it is necessary to promote captive breeding to maintain the current wild populations that are not genetically viable.
BIOPARC Valencia keeps a breeding group of drills, included in the European conservation program for this species (EEP), made up of a male and a group of females. And in 2010 it was born the first drill breeding in Bioparc. She was a female named EBONJI turns 14 years old on June 2.
More information: www.fundacionbioparc.org
