So for the next video that we're going to be going through, we're going to be talking about ongoing conservation projects, conservation groups and really meaning towards what are some of the things that you might be able to read about, what you might be able to get involved with. Just really wanting to show clearly not all of them and some are definitely I've got a biased favorite towards, but just hopefully showing you guys a diversity of projects that are currently out there. You can ask yourself, how can you get involved? There are zoos, there are conservation organizations, there are school groups, there are research expeditions. There's really a ton of information is available online and you can really start to take a look and see both what these groups mission values are, what their core values are, and see whether there's something that really captures your interest in a lot of these things. So we've got pictures of some of our tamarins or smaller monkeys, clearly in a zoo situation or a captive situation. We've got to given that's hanging out in the forest, so this can be part of a just general research expedition. Or in one instance, one of the groups does given walks, seek the opportunity to see the animals out in the wild, which having the opportunity to see free-ranging primates is, it's absolutely amazing. There are groups that work within forest biodiversity conservation. So instead of focusing on one particular species, they might be looking at an entire area to see how they can help that institute conservation efforts. Then the last picture down there in the corner is professor Bird Covert. Actually, Professor Laycock Quit, Professor [inaudible] and then myself in the background. This was taken in Hanoi at a [inaudible] monkey conference, where we were working on helping to develop a species action plan to help conserve the species. One of the first thing that we're going to be looking at is the Jane Goodall Institute. So many of you guys have probably heard about Jane Goodall, went to the Gombe in Africa to study chimpanzees in the '60s, and he's really kind of just continued forward with that and been incredibly inspirational in setting up the Jane Goodall Institute, setting up another program, we'll talk about Roots and Shoots. But the work that she started in there, she's helped to continue is just some of the absolute phenomenal things, like almost everybody, whether you know about primatology or not, has heard about Jane Goodall. So the Jane Goodall Institute and with a holistic approaches, Dr. Jane Goodall discovered that when we put local communities at the heart of conservation, we improve the lives of people, animals, and the environment. JGI advances Dr. Goodall's holistic approach through a tapestry of nine strategies that build on each other and bring the power of community-centered conservation to life. So as I said, founded, started doing research in the 1960s, 1977, founded the Jane Goodall Institute to help with species conservation. There was so much habitat destruction and illegal trafficking of animals going on that she want to be able to take a step and stand, and try to improve the lives of local community, and try to improve the lives and save the chimpanzees in the area. To that end, one of the programs that's been very successful and has branches all over the world now is Jane Goodall's roots and shoots. So what I love about this is they say, "Our mission is to empower young people to effect positive changes in their communities. You can help build a better tomorrow. It starts right here, right now." So these projects can, and just kind of a quick scan of him, they talked about, how can you get involved in your local community? How can you learn more about it? But they have this four-step formula for it, which is, number one, getting engaged. When you look on their website, they'll say, what are you interested in, are you interested in animals? Are you interested in plants? Are you interested in people, and they'll have you go through and it's very simplistic and when it's initially asking, but it's really cool in that, it's making that first step of getting engaged. They say the second step is, can be observed. So what do you see around you. Third step is take action and then fourth, to celebrate new achievements within this. So as I said, Roots and Shoots programs all over the world, and it's great because it's showing kids that they can be involved, they can make a difference, which is a fantastic place to start. KWWF, and you guys have probably seen or otherwise, you've seen the logo, which is that Panda Bear. But one of their particular programs is the African Great Apes Programme. So what they want to do is they want to improve Great Ape protection and management, build capacity within range states and stop the illegal trade in animal on ape products, and increase people's support for ape conservation. When you go on their site and just take a look at some of the work that they do, one of the ways that they recommend supporting the African Great Apes Program is through tourism. So they say, come visit gorillas, and this is the gorillas of Dzanga-Sangha in Central African Republic. So money earned through gorilla tourism contributes significantly to the conservation of the species. Providing funds for conservation projects and creating jobs and bringing other benefits to local communities living near gorillas. The bottom picture is on one of these gorilla tours where they've gone through and they've habituated the animals so that you can get pretty close and sit back and watch. Now, one of the best things about this one form of conservation and conservation tourism, is that they don't guarantee, or they shouldn't guarantee that you're going to see the animals. What you're really doing is you are investing in the opportunity to go into the wild and to see these animals in their natural habitats. It's not a guaranteed you walk up and you look behind the glass and there's the animals. It's a very different idea on it, but it's one of those, helping to conserve and preserve the area is the more important point than just seeing these guys out in the wild. The Nature Conservancy. It's a global environmental non-profit, working to create a world where people and nature can thrive. The example that we're using for this one is the Yunnan golden monkey. So creature that lives in China. Really, one of the biggest problems they have is deforestation and illegal hunting. They say that 60 percent of the world's wildlife was lost in the last 45 years, which is why the Nature Conservancy is dedicated protecting lands so wildlife populations have room to thrive. They mentioned that in China, where they're working with the species, they're taking a holistic approach to conserving the monkey, trying to help forest being cut down, and then also looking at renewable energy technologies. So ways to use a renewable energy, that means that you don't need to go through and cut the forests, you don't need to go through these deforestation processes in order to help the animals. The Little Fireface Project, I mentioned them a couple times. This is obviously a much smaller, more grassroots program, say WWF or the Jane Goodall Institute. But It's headed by Professor Anna Nekaris and studies the ecology of the slow and slender lorises, contributes wherever possible to the conservation and ecology of loris species throughout their range. They really have a very strong social media presence. This one's fairly cartoony and everything else, but they really want to be able to make this information accessible. They have a great volunteer program, so you can go and help volunteer for working with the animals in the field or working with the animals in captivity, working on illegal animal trade, working on social media campaigns. So a number of different ways to find yourself involved working with this incredibly cool species and really trying to help bring some benefit to the conservation of the species. A different way of looking at it is this organization called Primate Conservation, Incorporated. Well, initially what it was is there was a book called "All the World's Primates," and it's Noel Rowe who's the gentleman on the left sitting next to the macaque, and Mark Meyers, who's the gentleman on the right-hand side. The book, and actually it's a incredible website as well that All the World's Primate, it shows you photographs or drawing of every currently recognized taxon in the primate order with a synopsis of what is known about all, and they list 505 species. The information is already compiled by over 300 primatologists from around the world who've done field research on their particular lemur, loris, galago monkey, or ape in its natural habitat. So they are definitely trying to build this database and really illustrate and show the incredible diversity of primates. Their organization gives out a number of grants, two people from all over the world in order to go out and do research on primates within their natural habitat. The support that you can have for this is by donating money to them or, in many instances, helping to try to support some of the research and some of the work that's being done. The Endangered Asian Species Trust, is a British organization that runs the Dao Tien Endangered Primate Species Center in Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam. The national park where I've done a majority of my work. Really what they want is to combat the threat of illegal wildlife trade to Vietnam's endangered primates. They say that black market trading in wildlife is a multi-billion dollar illegal industry. They're eaten, they're used in traditional medicines, kept as pets, and used as tourist attractions. They've rescued many gibbons who are given as ceremonial gifts. Despite tough laws in Vietnam, primates continue to be illegally hunted and sold. So that's what they really want to try to stop. So they've got primary captive care, rehabilitation, monitoring after release, assessing and regenerating forest habitats, educational awareness, and just bringing light to the illegal animal trade. So rescue really something that happens that they do a really good job of. So there will be a call that someone has seen a gibbon that is in captivity. So they will go in conjunction with the Forest Protection Department and they'll rescue the animal from the illegal animal trade, from the pet trade. Rehabilitation, so they'll bring them to their center and they will make sure that the gibbons are healthy, they'll make sure that they are eating a proper nutritious diet, and they'll rehabilitate them to release them either to their semi-wild enclosures or there's also been a lot of work that they've been doing with some of the national parks in the area to help release the gibbons back into the wild. In addition to the rehabilitation of the gibbons, they talk about forest rehabilitation. So here's one of their rangers who is going through and helping to plant more species of trees inside the forest that the gibbons utilize. You're giving greater habitat, you're also helping this forest regeneration rather than this selective logging pressure that's happened. Finally, as I mentioned, they do release gibbons as well. So when they know that they've got an area that is very safe, very well-protected, and that they still have rangers on the ground to help monitor, they can begin to release animals back into the forest. Additionally, one of the things that's very popular with their organization is you can take a tour of their facilities, and what's great is that gibbons come first, the animals come first within their organization. So it is unlike many expenses of going to zoos or other natural sanctuaries where you can walk right up and look at the animals. These ones even intentionally built, appropriately designed enclosures, and they set them back off of the main trail areas so that you can still see the animals quite well, but you're not getting right up on top of them. Another Vietnamese organization, and this one is called GreenViet, and they've done an incredible job within their campaign. So have you ever heard of the Red-Shanked Douc Langur? In Da Nang City, where they are located in Central Vietnam, they've really done an amazing job of doing community outreach and building some of these tourists models of people going and enjoying these incredible animals in a very, very beautiful landscape. So this is a non-government organization and it was derived from an idea of their director, Dr. Ha Thang Long and a group of young researchers who were doing a study in biodiversity conservation in Kon Ka Kihn National Park in Vietnam. So the founders had this desire that GreenViet will be a place for passionate people who want to find out, research and spread the value of biodiversity to all Vietnamese people and to all people around the world. In order to raise awareness and find out solutions to boost community's responsibility for preserving wild animals, eco-friendly living, and using biodiversity resources sustainably. Again, lots of really good research coming out of the organization in terms of feeding and behavioral analysis. But then there's also a large amount of community building that's going into this. So it is on the Son Tra peninsula. So it's this beautiful peninsula that extends out of Da Nang City. Da Nang being, I think, the third largest city in Vietnam. But they'll organize communities to come out. The local communities and college students and younger students, and they'll go through and they'll do trash collection or they'll do drawings or anything to help raise awareness and build this understanding of what's going on for this particular species and really for the entire biodiversity of the area. They also have a strong effect on policy. So Da Nang is right along the coast, beautiful, beautiful beaches, so lots of tourism and then lots of people trying to come in and build more hotels. We'll address a little bit of this later on, but they've helped with a lot of the policy of both tourism and ecotourism, and trying to really protect and keep some of the laws that had been passed in Vietnam active. So here we've got a picture of their research center, and they do tens of thousands of hours of community outreach to local school children, to local communities, and to international researchers coming through. So you can go through this and there's a lot of hands-on activities inside of their center that really helps to illustrate the importance of biodiversity, and then show you some of the really cool things that are going on. Changing gears a little bit, I wanted to mention that zoos are quite often involved in a lot of conservation efforts. So many people think that zoos are not necessarily helping animals, just offering entertainment, but that really is not the case. So for one particular focus here, Denver Zoo studies, and this is the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey in Vietnam. Denver Zoo studies the monkey's ecology and patterns of human force use, an approach that helps us determine priority threats to address. This research, combined with nearly 10 years of experience in the region, has revealed that we must help local people minimize their reliance on forest timber. So they encourage them to diversify cooking, heating, and constructing resources through a holistic approach. So a lot of it really is community engagement, going out and working with children in the local population. So in many instances, they've never seen the animals or they don't know how rare and how important they actually are. So lots of opportunities to take them out into the forest and to show them what's going on around there and show the conservation efforts that are involved. For capacity building, it's not only building up the rangers in order to go through and monitor the animals, but also learning how to do some of the conservation patrolling, learning how to do data collection, really getting them directly involved in helping. The other portion of the capacity building that they've been working on is they say that the biggest problem is deforestation and hunting through the area. So if they want to minimize reliance on forest timber, they created these stoves, and the stoves changed the amount of firewood that's necessary. So they've had huge amounts of reduction in the amount of wood necessary in order for people to just survive and cook their foods. So is one particular aspect of it. Then the influence of conservation policy, and here's our Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys. On the opening slides, we had a picture of myself and some other scientists doing this conservation planning and conservation organization for this species. So they've been working in concert with government officials in Vietnam, with research scientists in Vietnam in order to help create this conservation policy that focuses on the people and on the animals and making certain that there is this community engagement in capacity building rather than just coming in and saying, "No, no, get out, you don't belong here any longer." Next place that we can talk about is San Diego Zoo, and they're institute for conservation research. They have projects all over the world. I've known them through their work in China and Vietnam, specifically on Asian leaf monkeys. But I really like a lot of the way that they form their ideas and the variety of things that they work on. So they say, "We generate, share, and apply scientific knowledge vital to the conservation of animals, plants, and habitats worldwide. We help shape the vision of San Diego Zoo global to lead the fight against extinction." So they go through the detail out of a number of these areas. They talk about conservation, genetics, so sustaining and restoring genetic diversity through bio-resource, banking, and research. Reproductive sciences, applying innovative science and technology to enhance reproduction. Population sustainability. Integrating ecology and technology to solve conservation challenges. Disease investigations. So removing disease as a roadblock to conservation. Plant conservation. Working across scientific disciplines to save rare plants. Recover ecology. Adaptively managing and restoring species to the wild. Community engagement. Driving conservation action through science education and community collaborations. Then bio-diversity banking. So advancing the science and curation of bio-materials for conservation. So this is the idea of frozen zoos, the saving of genetic material, of sperm, of eggs in order to possibly be able to, I'll say, restart the species at a later time if necessary. So if you're ever in San Diego and you have the opportunity, they've got both the zoo itself and then they also have their safari park. So amazing displays for the animals and really building those artificial but very natural enclosures for them. Another zoo that's definitely worth mentioning if you ever have the opportunity is the Singapore Zoo. The Singapore Zoo has both a daytime and a nighttime different parks in and of themselves. So the day park you go and you see all of the diurnal animals, the animals that are awake during the day, and then you can come back to the night safari, to the evening zoo and walk around and see all the nocturnal animals in their natural displays, in their natural enclosures. Very, very, very cool experience. Changing gears completely really is an organization called Earthwatch. Earthwatch is an international environmental non-profit organization that connects people with scientists worldwide to conduct environmental research and empowers them with the knowledge they need to conserve the planet. You really get to experience hands-on science in some of the most astounding locations in the world. You also meet a community of like-minded travelers return home with stories filled with adventures; how they build some of these ideas. But while I've not personally done them, I have had good conversations with people that have engaged with this organization. They talk about scientific expeditions. You can go on their website and you can find, are you looking for marine-based expeditions, are you looking for land-based expeditions, what are the species that you're really interested. This idea of volunteer tourism, you go to a place, you volunteer your time, you volunteer your money, and help out. It's not just, "Hey, on my vacation, I went and sat on the beach." You can have a vacation where you go and help do research on leopards or anything else that they are working on there. Some interesting scientific research that definitely goes on. You get a chance to not only go and see this thing, but to learn and help contribute to conservation. There is also a very strong focus on education. Again, making certain that the more we know, the better we can help these species and help other species around the planet. On a local level, one thing that they were talking about that I thought was fantastic was they've got a program called Pollinator Watch teaching people how to use their own backyards, their own garden areas, their own flower boxes or whatever to help support and attract pollinators who are incredibly important for food supply and everything else along the globe. This is absolutely nothing to do with primates, but it's an organization that I've worked with in the past and I've got a lot of respect for the work that they do, the time and dedication, the volunteer aspects, the training aspects, and just what they've done to really help out. Free the Bears is an Australian organization and they have rescue centers set up in Cambodia, and Laos, and Vietnam. As I put here, they helped remove dancing bears in India. They have volunteer programs where you can come to the rescue centers and learn how to care for the animals, learn how to set up enrichment for the animals. The two guys on the left are giving out treat balls, think about like your dog. They've got those small little KONGs where you shove dog biscuits or other snacks into them. Well, these are the same thing, but they're scaled up for a big bear to play with. Then the two women there in the center are making hammocks. Taking a bunch of old nylon and weaving them together to make hammocks which the bears absolutely love playing on. It's a joy to actually see what they're doing. You've got these illegal animal trade, you've got bear bile farms, you've got bear paw soup, all these things. To tackle the problem, Free the Bears and other wildlife conservation organizations are working with governments to strengthen laws and increase capacity for enforcement, working with traditional medicine practitioners to promote synthetic and herbal alternatives to bear bile, and addressing consumer demand with educational campaigns about the cruelty inflicted on bears in the farms. A multi-faceted approach to really try to solve this problem. Then an even completely different scale on idea, but something that we can find in many of our local communities. I use this one as an example. This is the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. A non-profit organization that is devoted to the rehabilitation and release of orphaned, injured, and sick wildlife. It's located here in Boulder, Colorado. You can have community outreach, you can have volunteer opportunities, and then they also have wildlife release site programs. Somebody finds an injured animal on their property, at their house, or on the side of the road, they can call Greenwood. They can call these organizations that'll bring the animals in, will help rehabilitate and nurse them back to health. Then they have wildlife site release programs so people that have volunteered, if they own large properties or other very useful habitats, they can go out there and they can release those animals. Something in a very local level in order to help within your own community to help do conservation and biodiversity protection from really all levels. Again, a wide variety from larger non-government organizations, some government organizations, some volunteer organizations, some travel organizations, but all these different ways that people are trying to address conservation and really trying to make a solid difference in the biodiversity on this planet. I hope that this has been an inspiration to you to take a look and see what's available or what's going on so that maybe we can all take one more step forward in conservation
