The Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) announced that an endangered female Grauer's gorilla, confiscated from poachers as an infant in Rwanda three years ago, was returned home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
26 May 2014: The Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP) announced that an endangered female Grauer’s gorilla, confiscated from poachers as an infant in Rwanda three years ago, was returned home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN peacekeepers, in cooperation with, inter alia, the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN), Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, Gorilla Doctors, Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education (GRACE) Center and GRASP facilitated the transport.
GRASP coordinator, Doug Cress, recognized that moving endangered species to safety is not generally part of a peace-keeping mission and praised this support. According to the 2013 GRASP report, Stolen Apes, a minimum of 2,972 great apes are lost from the wild each year in Africa and Asia through illegal trade, and gorillas comprise 14 percent of that total.
GRASP was established in 2001 to respond to the conservation crisis facing great apes. [GRASP News] [UNEP News] [Publication: Stolen Apes – The illicit trade in Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos and Orangutans]