President of Rwanda Announces Historic Forest Protection Project in Partnership with Earthpark and Great Ape Trust

Rwandan President H. E. Paul Kagame today unveiled his country's
first national conservation park to promote reforestation and
conservation, and research to enhance knowledge of the world's rapidly
diminishing number of great apes. In collaboration with Ted Townsend,
founder of Earthpark and Great Ape Trust of Iowa, President Kagame
announced at the Clinton Global Initiative a joint 10-year program
called The Rwanda Forest Protection Project. They will partner to
develop both a national conservation park and field station for
reforestation and conservation of great apes, including mountain
gorillas, which currently number around 700 worldwide.

Under this historic agreement, the government of Rwanda will
identify, dedicate and protect in perpetuity a region of ecologically
significant size to create the Rwanda National Conservation Park.
Earthpark, North America's unique 240-acre environmental center, in
partnership with Great Ape Trust, will establish a field station in
this park to research and promote reforestation and conservation of
great apes. Rwanda is home to two types of great ape - approximately
half of the 700 mountain gorillas worldwide and a small population of
eastern chimpanzees numbering approximately 500.

Resources for the program will be mobilized from carbon trading
and other potential sources in Rwanda. Rwanda has the highest human
population density in Africa with about 10 million people living in a
country smaller than the state of Maryland (and one-fifth the size of
Iowa). These factors have caused acute land and resource scarcity, and
resulting pressure on natural habitats.

"We are immensely appreciative of Mr. Townsend's shared passion
and commitment to preserve and restore our precious forests that have
been destroyed by many factors including deforestation and climate
change," according to President Kagame. "We also are confident that
this first-ever international project will prevent the extinction of
our great apes through Great Ape Trust's world-renowned scientists."

"Our partnership with President Kagame and his country represents
a landmark event reinforcing our goal to protect the world's rapidly
vanishing forests and natural resources, including great apes, which
are critical in educating us about our past and our future," said Ted
Townsend, founder of Earthpark and Great Ape Trust of Iowa. "Our
10-year commitment in Rwanda coincides with our goals for Earthpark -
within the first decade of operation we expect to have 10 million
on-site visitors, 100,000 STEM (science, technology, engineering and
math) trained and certified teachers, and up to one billion people
reached globally via the Internet."

Earthpark will be an icon of ecological literacy and learning to
improve the lives of people, species and the environment around the
world. This unique learning campus will demonstrate sustainable and
restorative solutions to the myriad ecological threats facing
humanity, using state-of-the-art educational tools and online
communication with schools, communities and government worldwide.
Earthpark will include four acres of tropical rainforest, a
600,000-gallon aquarium and more than 1,000 species of plants and
small animals in a re-created ecosystem. Situated next to 15,000-acre
Lake Red Rock near Pella, Iowa, the campus will have prairies,
woodlands, trails and campsites coexisting with research labs, a green
hotel, retail space, and a green utility infrastructure powered in
part by alternative and renewable energy sources. Earthpark will host
the first green building simulator in league with the U.S. Green
Building Council.

Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in Des
Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture,
language, tools and intelligence. When completed, it will be the
largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first
worldwide to include all four types of great ape - bonobos,
chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - for noninvasive
interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative
capabilities. Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and
an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great
apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing a unique
educational experience about great apes.

Ted Townsend, founder and president of Townsend Vision, has
created three complementary educational and social programs designed
to meet the many challenges facing the 21st century. Earthpark, Great
Ape Trust of Iowa and the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy resulted
from his lifelong interest in conservation, sustainability and
restoration. Each program is grounded in science and infuses
Townsend's passion to facilitate respectful collaborations with other
cultures.