 The message that forests are more than trees is certainly heard by some people but I still get the feeling that those people in closed rooms working at the details of red and how we're going to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation are still thinking that it's the trees, the timber, the the lignin is where the carbon is and of course it is but I still hope that I mean in the workshop we heard the phrase that conservation must be integral to red in other words it's not an optional extra that you might add on if it's convenient it's integral and maybe that message is getting through a little bit but I still I don't see much sign I see a lot of government struggling to conserve their wildlife and I don't see much sign of the very large sums of money being set aside for climate purposes being directed at conservation it's like red money is for reducing emissions from deforestation and then there's a teeny teeny little stream of money that goes into conservation of wildlife as if that isn't part of the same thing so it's bringing those two streams together so the conservation is adequately funded and red is successful in the long term because if you want to have permanence in your forest carbon store you need the animals as well as the plants so after it's 35 years since I got involved with great apes and during that time the number of apes on our planet has declined as the number of humans has risen and whilst I'm an optimist by nature and I feel that we have to turn that around I know that the only populations of great apes that are known to be increasing are the two tiny populations of mountain gorillas that got down to fewer than 300 each and now are beginning to pick up so we maybe have 800 mountain gorillas in the world that's a very small number other gorillas chimpanzees bonobos or Angotans Gibbons are all declining so whilst we've been hearing people blowing the whistle saying this is a crisis we need more effort clearly the response to that crisis has not been adequate except in one or two small places where enough money effort resources people dedicated courageous conservationists have turned things around and the hope is that the fear of dangerous climate change the realization that forests are not just an ornamental part of our planet they're integral to the function of the biosphere and our future survival well perhaps that will be enough motivation so that enough resources are put in to protect the whole forest ecosystems upon which we all depend and then we might start to see eight populations recovering and that would be better for the apes and better for us in the long term