Impact!

At one time there were over 1 million Chimpanzees in Africa. Now there are only an estimated 150,000 to 235,000 Chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are now endangered because of loss of habitat due to making farmland and logging and poachers taking them to sell and hunters hunting for their meat.

Chimpanzees live in 21 African countries. They like a habitat this is made up of dense tropical rainforest but can also be found in woodlands, bamboo forest, swamps and even some open savannahs and grassland areas.

Chimpanzees are about 4 feet tall. Males weigh between 90 and 120 pounds and females weigh between 60 and 110 pounds. Chimpanzees rarely live past the age of 50 in the wild but have been known to live the age of 60 in captivity.

Chimpanzees are omnivores. Omnivores eat a wide variety of foods that include fruits, nuts, seeds and insects. Chimpanzees sometimes hunt and eat meat.

I became interested in the Chimpanzee when my sister saved one in my name through the World Wildlife Federation and now I have learned so much about them. If I told my sister she would be so happy because saving one Chimpanzee or even two Chimpanzees can change the world.

People don’t realize how important a Chimpanzee is. They help us so much. They are very useful. People should stop hunting them. Chimpanzees are similar to you and me and very intelligent. Please, if you can, help me save the Chimpanzees. Jane Goodall is a very important person. She has been helping the Chimpanzees for a long time and teaching people of their importance in this world. The following is the response she gave to a reporter when asked why we should save the Chimpanzee.
“ It’s a question that everybody asks, why should we bother to save chimpanzees or whales, or why should we bother to save redwoods? But the thing is that we are increasingly finding, as the old people in the old days knew, that everything is interconnected. And when you remove one piece of the puzzle, that little hole starts to spread until the entire puzzle may collapse. And the chimpanzees in their own forest play a very important role. You could almost call them gardeners. They trim trees and they carry their fruits long distances so that they help with the germination and the spacing of plants.”

For more information on the World Wildlife Federation please visit their website at:
www.worldwildlife.org

baby chimpanzee

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 8:45 pmand is filed under Endangered Species. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.