It was a blue cloudless sky Sunday, with a summer heat in winter at GAP Sanctuary in Sorocaba. More than 60 days without rain assaulted nature and its components. Ignoring this drama, more than 50 parrots flew from tree to tree, making a deafening noise.

The day before, a fire alarm coming from the land road that borders the sanctuary in its backyards, near Jimmy’s and babies chimpanzees’ enclosure, converged to warn about the fire that began, possibly generated by a human hand without consciousness of the evil that might entail.

In that little oasis of green space that is the Sanctuary, all kinds of animals that survived from hunting, deforestation, fires and human insanity jostle to have a safe destination.

This winter is the warmest, possibly throughout our history, at São Paulo state countryside. Those who still do not believe that climate change will lead to a possible cataclysm in this century may rethink their optimism.

Human beings are destroying the planet and its biodiversity at a rapid pace, mercilessly. Some species are already extinct and others are endangered. Over the next 20 years, there will be no more apes in the wild, as well as lions, tigers, hippos, rhinos and many smaller monkeys and birds.

No program that exists in the world today is serious, important or comprehensive enough to contain the devastation that is happening. Governments, immersed in their political and economic problems, do not give importance to the tragedy that lies ahead and when they wake up – if they do – it will be too late.

Those who think we exaggerate and that our fears are unfounded, we suggest taking a walk through the countryside of our state, which, as ever, is on fire, wildly, without anyone doing anything serious to stop it or putting in practice a real program of environmental protection of our natural resources, so that there won’t be a worse tragedy next year.

Our disrespect against nature and its components will be charged double from future generations, who will try to survive on a planet that is being actually annihilated by us now.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International