International animal legislation
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:
Twenty-three nations with native chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, and orangutans on September 9, 2005 signed a Declar-ation
on Great Apes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, committing
themselves to protecting great apes and ape habitat in terms similar
to the language of the 1982 global moratorium on commercial whaling
and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change.
The treaty was brokered through four years of negotiation by
the Great Apes Survival Project, formed by the United Nations
Environment Program and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation. “GRASP has convinced nearly all of the range states
that saving great apes is very much in their interests, by stressing
that apes can bring enormous economic benefit to poor communities
through eco-tourism,” summarized Michael McCarthy, envronment
editor of the London Independent. “The new agreement places ape
conservation squarely in the context of strategies for poverty
reduction and developing sustainable livelihoods.”