April 14, 2008
Mobile Gaming for Gorilla Conservation
Four years ago, wildlive!, a project run by Fauna & Flora International with funding from Vodafone, developed a mobile phone game dedicated to gorilla conservation.
The game was received favorably by the media, and proceeds from sales to mobile owners went to gorilla conservation. But when the wildlive! project ended three years later, so did the game…until today. Silverbackers is back!
Within the next few hours, the game will be officially re-introduced by Ken Banks, a former participant in the wildlive! project and founder of kiwanja.net, a non-profit organization dedicated to mobile technologies for development.
Cell phones and gorillas are actually related and their fates entertwines, as one of the (many) reasons given for the decimation of the habitat of the eastern lowland gorilla - cutting the apes' population by more than 70 percent in the past decade - is attributed to "the spread of small-scale mining for gold, precious stones and columbine tantalite, a mineral used to make cell phones and other high-tech gadgets". (Newsday)
On his blog, Banks acknowledges how fighting and rebel activity in the Democratic Republic of Congo are putting pressure on the local environment, including gorillas and the people who protect them.
There’s also a Facebook Group for people who want to join and help raise awareness.
[via Smart Mobs]
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