MADRID, June 25 — Spain’s Parliament voiced its support today for the rights of great apes to life and freedom – apparently the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.
The Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Ape Project (GAP), devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defence of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of GAP - Spain.
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WASHINGTON, June 19 — The United States Congress approved landmark legislation June 19 to address the global illegal logging crisis. The U.S. becomes the first country in the world
to prohibit the import, sale or trade of illegally harvested wood and wood products.

“The world’s biggest consumer nation has sent a message that will be heard from forest to retail shelf: the United States’ doors are now closed to products made from illegal wood,” said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, which
spearheaded the coalition supporting the ban.

The legislation amends the U.S. Lacey Act, a long-standing wildlife trafficking statute, to include trade in products made from illegally harvested wood. The law received definitive approval with Congress’s over-ride of President George Bush’s Farm Bill veto last night - a re-vote to correct procedural problems with the bill’s original passage on May 22nd.

The bill also creates a requirement for importers to declare the species and country of origin of any plant or plant product. This new measure, which will significantly increase transparency in global wood supply chains, goes into effect in 180 days.
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Chimpanzees and orangutans plan for the future just like us.

They are capable of exercising self-control to postpone gratification and to imagine future events via “mental time travel,” according to new research from Lund University Cognitive Science in Sweden.

The skill of future planning was commonly thought to be exclusive to humans, although some studies of apes and crows have challenged this idea, say researchers Mathias and Helena Osvath. Now, for the first time, there is “conclusive evidence of advanced planning capacities in non-human species,” they say.
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The number of orangutans could fall by nearly 50 percent over the next decade due to habitat destruction and human-animal conflicts, according to estimates by the directorate general for forest protection and nature conservation.

The current orangutan population is believed to be 61,234, according to data from the directorate general. Most are found in the forests of Borneo (54,567), with the remainder in Sumatra (6,667).

The orangutan population in Borneo is facing the greatest risk of decline over the next 10 years, said director of biological diversity conservation at the Forestry Ministry, Toni Suhartono. He said the rapid pace of forest destruction had attributed to habitat loss each year of between 1.5 and 2 percent in Borneo and between 1 and 1.5 percent in Sumatra.

Toni said habitat loss due to forest destruction was the main cause of the reduction in the numbers of orangutans, compounded by less significant factors such as human-animal conflicts.
The government is very concerned about the reduction in the orangutan population, said Toni. (more…)