GABON LAND OF EXCEPTION
With discovered Gabonese green Gold
By an act which founds a new standard as regards African
conservation, Gabon, which contains some of the most preserved rain
forests world, announced on September 4, 2002 with Johannesburg in
South Africa, the classification of 10 percent of its territory in
National park.
The president of Gabon, El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, confirmed the
creation of 13 national parks, representing more than 30.000 km2,
thus protecting the vital field from thousands of gorillas, chimpanzees,
elephants of forest and other species which for some are endemic in
Gabon. “This is one of the actions for the conservation most courageous
of these ten last years” said the chairman of Wildlife Conservation
Society (WCS), Dr. Steven Sanderson.
The WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), which has fought for the
conservation in Gabon for 10 years and which currently works in close
cooperation with the Gabonese government in this initiative, calls
this event a major victory for the fauna of Africa. The new Parks
extend from the littoral areas where the hippopotamuses exploit beaches
vièrges to single clearings in primary forest, where live gorillas
known as “naive” bus not having any fear of the man. Several of these
new Parks are arranged for the development of the ecotourism, which
will represent an economic alternative to the exploitation of the
natural resources of Gabon like that of wood.
“We will find this manner, an alternative way with the pure and simple
exploitation of our natural resources by privileging the safeguarding
of our ecosystem. In this order of ideas, many which is those affirm
already that Gabon has the potential to become” Mecque of Nature “where
pilgrims will run of the four cardinal points of the Earth to come
to make sure that there still exists of such treasures on planet”,
declared President Omar Bongo Ondimba.
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