Annual Report 2008

We are very pleased to present to you the 2008 Annual Report of the Frankfurt Zoological Society of 1858 and our supporting “Help for Threatened Wildlife” Foundation. Despite the financial and economic crisis, we were fortunate over the past year to be able to continue to strengthen our efforts to preserve the world’s biodiversity.

In the following pages we report on the details of this work and review our exciting anniversary year. And of course the Annual Report contains the admittedly somewhat dry but nonetheless informative figures recapping the financial situation of the FZS and Foundation. As in previous years, both financial statements were approved with- out qualification by the auditor selected by the membership.

In a speech former World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn emphasized that even the most important projects in developing and emerging countries can only succeed when local people and governments are fully engaged. How true. This was something that Bernhard Grzimek, who would have turned 100 on 24 April, recognized from the very beginning of his conservation work. Already in the 1950s he was working to convince African governments of the economic and cultural value of their country’s national parks, foremost among them the Serengeti. Grzimek’s forward-looking ideas remain just as relevant today and continue to guide our many conservation projects.

The 100th anniversary of Bernhard Grzimek’s birth and the United Nations’ “Year of the Gorilla” in 2009 – what an appropriate confluence of events! Our Gorilla conservation projects are meeting the challenge in the long troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s why the «Frankfurt Gorilla Declaration» of 10 June 2009 bears our signature.

On behalf of the Board and the Council of the “Help for Threatened Wildlife” Foundation, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all of our members, sponsors, donors and friends for your passionate support. The same goes for our staff and partners around the world and our dedicated team at headquarters.

Please continue to lend us your support – because preserving the basis of our existence by protecting the world’s biological diversity will require increasing commitment in the years to come.

Gerhard Kittscher
President of the Frankfurt Zoological Society