New Primate Poster Shows the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Posted Nov 6, 2009)
School children scour over the poster looking for illegal activities to report to the local ranger. A telephone waits on the desk. One team of children count five violations; a macaque in a cage outside a café, a gibbon on a chain at a fancy resort, a hunter trying to shoot a langur in a tree, and a truck load of wild macaques heading for the Chinese border. But the other group is quicker, the group’s leader racing for the phone reporting what his team has discovered.
A local teacher, playing the part of the ranger, plays along, thanking the child for their report. The poster is part of the new primate lesson plan developed by ENV and used for the first time in schools in August.
The lesson plan promotes awareness, but also aims to encourage children and their families to 'get involved' and take action to help protect their endangered primates including reporting hunters and traders, helping educate others, and preserving habitat for gibbons and langurs.