UN says major initiative needed to save Great Apes
Date: 22-May-01
Country: USA
Author: Doug Palmer
"The clock is now standing at one minute to midnight for the Great Apes," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). "Some experts estimate that in as little as five to ten years they will be extinct across most of their range."
Toepfer called on the business sector, particularly those companies with interests in the primates' native habitat in Africa and southeast Asia, to help fund UNEP's Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP).
"We can no longer stand by and watch these wondrous creatures, some of whom share 98 percent of the DNA in humans, die out," Toepfer said.
UNEP officials estimate they need more than $1 million to get the project to protect gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonoboes up and running.
Starting with $150,000 of their own funds, UNEP plans to work closely with Ape Alliance, a coalition of more than 40 conservation groups, on five initial projects which will eventually be expanded all 23 countries where Great Apes still live.
Topping the list are the Cross River Gorillas of the Afi Mountains in Nigeria, which UNEP officials said are the most critically endangered in the world.
Because of logging, encroaching agriculture and hunting, there are only about 150 Cross River Gorillas left.
Illegal logging and mining operations pose a two-pronged threat to the Great Apes. Those activities not only destroy habitat, but workers kill the animals for food, said Ian Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance.
Capturing infants apes for sale and poaching for trophies and souvenirs also has taken a toll.
Wild chimpanzees numbered more than one million in Africa at the beginning of the 1900s, but could be extinct by 2010 or 2020, UNEP officials said.
The situation is equally grim in Indonesia, where orangutan populations could fall below viable levels in as little as 10 years, they said.
UNEP officials hope education and increased conservation can still turn the situation around.
"Where Great Ape tourism has been developed, for instance in Uganda's Bwindi and Kibale Forest National Parks, they have become to local communities an important source of revenue worth more alive than dead," said Heather Eves, director of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force.
Few people realize the critical role gorillas play in regenerating woodlands by dispersing seed and pruning trees, Eves said. "Along with elephants, they are the gardeners of the African and southeast Asian forests," she said.
Other projects include giving rangers and wardens state-of-the-art communications equipment and vehicles to battle poachers, UNEP officials said. Establishing wildlife corridors linking fragmented populations would also help.
Ivory Coast has the largest population of chimpanzees in West Africa, but most live in small and isolated groups that have limited prospects for long term survival, UNEP said.
