Political Quotes

“a December 16, 1997, New York Times article entitled ``Asia's Forest Fires, Scant Mercy for Orangutans'' described the widespread illegal logging and slash and burn agriculture that posed an existential threat to the orangutan, one of the world's only four species of great apes. It was after reading that article and speaking to scientists who had devoted their lives to saving the orangutan from extinction that I started a program in the foreign aid budget to help protect their rapidly shrinking habitat. Orangutans live in only two places on Earth, Borneo and Sumatra, and since I first learned of the threats they are facing, the U.S. Agency for International Development has provided millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations in Indonesia to try to ensure their survival in the wild. Important progress has been made. Back when the program started, it was feared that the orangutan would be extinct in the wild within 15 years if nothing was done. That has not happened, but their survival is far from assured, as an article in the April 6, 2016, edition of the New York Times entitled ``Adapting to Life as Orphans, Fires and Corporate Expansion Threaten Indonesia's Orangutans,'' describes. It reminded me of what had sparked my attention 20 years ago and how much more there is yet to do. Orangutans and humans share 97 percent of the same DNA.…”