The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is awarding over 1.5 million dollars in international conservation grants to help preserve imperiled wildlife in various parts of the world. The grant money, provided through the Service's Wildlife Without Borders Multinational Species Programs, is expected to attract another 2.3 million dollars in matching funds.
The funds will be disbursed to thirty countries to help protect marine turtles, great apes and African elephants from threats such as poaching, illegal trafficking and loss of habitat. And so, a beach in Costa Rica will be made safer for nesting leatherback sea turtles.
Some of the funds will pay for continued dawn-to-dusk protection and monitoring of mountain gorillas in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park. Other money will be made available for the conservation of African elephants in Zambia, Malawi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other wildlife in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth Park will also benefit, as will loggerhead turtles in Cape Verde; and chimpanzees and both western and eastern gorillas in Central African Republic, Gabon, Rwanda, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Tanzania.
“These grants provide critical support for efforts targeting highly imperiled species and habitats throughout the world,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s acting Director Rowan Gould. “They enable local communities, partner organizations, universities and governments to conserve and manage their natural heritage.”
The naturalist John James Audubon once said, "A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children." That sentiment is echoed by the motto of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Wildlife Without Borders Multinational Species program, "To conserve wildlife and plants for future generations."
The U.S. believes that money spent to preserve a better world for our children is money well spe
