The People
A growing human population makes demands on its environment. Most people of Nigeria and Cameroon struggle with some of the things we, in the more developed world, take as basic amenities in our lives. For example, you have probably never considered your refrigerator a luxury item, but most families in Africa have never had one!
In Nigeria und Kamerun müssen sich die Menschen täglich mit Problemen auseinandersetzten, wie genügend Nahrung für Ihre Familien kaufen oder anbauen zu können, einen bezahlten Beruf zu finden. es liegt in der Natur des Menschen, das die Menschen in Afrika sich dasselbe Wünschen wie wir; eine gute Arbeit, das richtige Essen, Häuser/Wohnung, Kleidung und die Möglichkeit das Leben zu geniessen.
People struggle with very basic things like buying or growing enough food to feed their families, finding a paying job, etc. Human nature is the same the world over - in the end, people in Africa want the same things we want; a good job, adequate food, shelter, clothing, and the opportunity to enjoy life.
The socioeconomic issues that impact a decent standard of living for people in Nigeria also impact the conservation of primates and present a very complex problem. It seems that, in the endless struggle to save animals, the solutions presented always favor either human livelihoods or animals and their habitats. In the end, however, it is the African people who must make the choice to preserve their remaining wildlife. We can only help them by providing them with the knowledge, the tools and, most importantly, the desire to do so.
Saving the Forest for all
The 'umbrella species' concept is the idea that one species can be used to save others (i.e. in helping save the forest for chimpanzees or drills, we might also save the biodiversity present there). This concept does not typically include the human element. Some conservation organizations in Africa are focused only on saving wildlife and their habitat. Human related projects in Africa are usually focused on improving human health or on development projects meant to alleviate poverty. Here at Tengwood.org, we would like to use a more holistic approach to conserving wildlife - one that integrates humanity and nature.
Around the world, we are losing forests and species every day. It is a global problem - this means it needs a global solution. In the developed world, the over-consumption of resources takes us out of balance - we need many 'things' to make us comfortable that deplete natural resources everywhere in the world. In Africa, nature is abundant, but people still need the education necessary to make their choice - will they save their natural world? Conservationists working in Africa must pass on our collective knowledge of how to preserve what is left.
In the end, we all make a choice - will we choose to save our natural world or will we choose not to...?
«Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.»
~Cree Indian Proverb
«I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.»
~Unknown Nigerian Chieftan
«We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children»
~Native American Proverb
«We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, mother and sonand greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.»
~Henry Beston~
