Carbon Conservation Efforts Would be Enhanced by Highlighting Threatened Forest Primates

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Efforts to conserve the carbon stored in tropical forests would be enhanced by linking the work to the charismatic, threatened primates that live there, Oregon State University ecologists assert today in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Efforts to conserve the carbon stored in tropical forests would be enhanced by linking the work to the charismatic, threatened primates that live there, Oregon State University ecologists assert today in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Climate change and the biodiversity crisis are two of the planet’s greatest threats,” said William Ripple of the OSU College of Forestry. “And it’s becoming clear that large-scale climate action won’t happen if we treat climate change as a standalone problem.”

Ripple and co-author Christopher Wolf, also of the College of Forestry, analyzed 340 threatened forest primate species in terms of how much carbon their ranges are warehousing. Threatened species are those classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.

Read more at: Oregon State University

Orangutan (Photo Credit: Matt Betts, Oregon State University)