The World Conservation Union (IUCN) is the world’s largest and most important conservation network.  The Union brings together 82 states, 111 government agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organizations and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide partnership. IUCN’s mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.

IUCN appoints specialist groups of internationally recognized experts who bring scientific knowledge to bear on conservation issues. The Primate Specialist Group focuses on apes, monkeys, and prosimians, and recently established a Section on Great Apes. Dr. Beck and Dr. Serge Wich, an expert on orangutan behavioral ecology and currently a visiting scientist at The Trust, are Section members.

One of the Section’s functions is to respond to unanticipated conservation emergencies involving apes, e.g. a disease outbreak or a natural disaster. Expertise is critical but useless in the face of such emergencies if resources are not immediately available to support a response.  Great Ape Trust contributed to an emergency response fund formed by the group.