Monday, a woman in Stamford, CT, was attacked and mauled by a pet chimpanzee. Travis the chimp, which belonged to Sandra Herold and which had appeared in TV commercials, was shot and killed during his violent rampage, and the woman he attacked, Charla Nash, is in critical condition. Attacks such as these are startling because, while most of us don’t own a chimp, many people persist in seeing chimps as harmless, playful, diaper-wearing, furry humans. But as Jeff Corwin noted on The Today Show Tuesday morning, chimps are wild animals. They are much stronger than humans when fully grown, and despite their cute faces, they don’t behave like humans when raised in captivity. The Jane Goodall Institute of Canada warns people against taking chimps as pets, saying that they’re much better off in the wild. But humans have negatively impacted the wild, as well, removing much of the habitat that the chimps call home.

Chimpanzees are native to Africa, where the ever-increasing human population there is taking a toll on the chimpanzee habitat. Aside from deforestation conducted by farmers, commercial logging is a major threat to chimps. Much of the problem arises when local governments sell forest concessions to timber companies from more “civilized” countries. The companies come into areas such as the Ivory Coast and Zaire and often clear cut the forest land, leaving uninhabitable desert behind. Additionally, the roads that the timber companies cut into the landscape lead illegal “bushmeat” hunters and other poachers to the remote locations where chimps and other animals make their homes. Chimpanzees have a slow reproduction rate and can’t keep up with the loss of their numbers, leading to their presence on the endangered species list.

What does this have to do with the Privacy Council and ending junk mail? Think about where junk mail comes from. 100 million trees are cut down every year to make the unwanted paper that shows up in our mailboxes; that’s the equivalent of the entire Rocky Mountain National Forest every four months. The trees used to make junk mail come from all over the world, and where the timber is harvested, habitats are threatened. Reducing our junk mail doesn’t just remove an annoyance from our lives or keep paper out of landfills… It also preserves the ecosystems that animal species, including endangered species like chimps, rely on worldwide.

Sign up for Privacy Council’s removal service today by clicking here, and do your part to reduce worldwide deforestation. Chimpanzees don’t make good pets, as the events of this week illustrate, but if their habitat continues to dwindle, they won’t have anywhere left to live at all.