What can the general public do to help gorillas and other endangered animals?

What can the general public do to help gorillas and other endangered animals?

Daniel Simmonds (Zookeeper) gives expert video advice on: Do the gorillas trust you?; Do you trust the gorillas?; How can you tell gorillas apart? and more...

I think its really important for the public to increase their own knowledge of wild animals, wild habitats and the efforts being made by conservation charities, like The Zoological Society of London that owns London Zoo. You can find that out first of all by visiting the websites or indeed visiting the places like ZSL London itself Zoo where there's so much information for people to learn. Once you've then actually learned a bit about the animals and what's being done to protect them, you can then make youre own decision about what you want to do. So that could be something really simple like not renewing your mobile phone every year. This is because the minerals used in the production of mobile phones are mined from central Africa, the very habitat that gorillas live in, and that's causing habitat destruction. Or it could be a case of writing to the local MP to campaign about issues or to comment on issues that you feel the government at a much higher level should be taking care of. I think the important thing though is that everyone within the public, even in the smallest way, needs to be fully aware of the importance of conservation, the importance of animals and the importance of their natural habitats. If each individual person can make the smallest difference then the group effort will be all the stronger.