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.