Great Ape Diaries

Posted by admin on Dec 9, 2013

Diary #95 – “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation” Will Wilmar Change The Game?

Portland, OR - On December 5th the world was overwhelmed by the end of a generation, the passing of Nelson Mandela. That same day, with scarcely a media whisper, another end may have begun. A potentially titanic shift in the battle against corporate palm oil’s destructive nature occured. Wilmar, the biggest palm oil conglomerate on the planet, issued a statement on its corporate website, a...

Posted by admin on Nov 27, 2013

Diary #93 – The Politics of Extinction

Enroute Amsterdam to Portland - This may be one of the most “diary-things” I have posted. assuming diaries are this thing that is a bit like taking stock of the jetsam and flotsam that the tide tosses up on the shore of my mind, then this is it. Nothing about this posting changes the world, even changes my thinking or project direction. Still it rests there on my mental beach, refusing to wash...

Posted by admin on Nov 9, 2013

Diary #92 – “Giving these groups handouts in the form of money is little more than placing a band-aid/plaster on a problem.”

Nairobi, Kenya - Maybe it’s bumping into the poached skulls of chimps and gorillas staring out from carved human figures I’m finding in curio shops along the roads of Kenya, maybe it’s the store shelves lined with palm cooking oil, maybe it’s being in the home of GRASP-UNEP and the UN’s climate change and REDD+ folks, or maybe it’s simply being on the Equator, the...

Posted by admin on Oct 17, 2013

Diary #91 – Climate Change: boiling down details and discovering new ones

Washington D.C. - As the Great Ape Diaries project journeys into its third-year a cluster of key topics are boiling to the surface – climate change and tropical forest fragmentation are chief among them – while bewildering sometimes to understand – the role of each is critical, I’ll try and share as much as I can to help all of us understand and participate–the decisions (or...

Posted by admin on Oct 9, 2013

Diary #89 – Great Apes Summit Delegates Issue Statement on Palm Oil

Baltimore, Maryland USA - A week removed from the Great Apes Summit 2013 GRASP issues a statement on palm oil. With palm oil “coming home” to the Congo Basin the disaster that has become the Asian home of the orangutan is looming over the second largest rainforest on Earth and home to most of Africa’s the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos. Below is the statement—now we need the courage...

Posted by admin on Sep 6, 2013

Diary #86 – “You can’t handle the truth!”

Portland, OR - Two world’s are colliding this morning as the airwaves and web is knotted in a ping-pong match of commentary and rhetoric over Syria. It seems so immediate, so now, this conflict, but I just finished watching a three-part Al Jazeera documentary on the French influence in Africa over the past half Century–condoned by the British and Americans–and realize this is an...

Posted by admin on Sep 4, 2013

Diary #85 – Great Ape Summit 2013: Who’s There vs Who’s Not

Portland, OR - This morning I find myself deep in preparation for the upcoming Great Ape Summit at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival 2013 in Wyoming; trying to find a hotel I can afford, calculating drive time to Wyoming, and all the while scribbling questions. I’m struggling with the questions to ask the illustrious list of attendees. Yet I keep scribbling questions that these folks...