http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0521-03.htm
Published on Monday,
May 21, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Last Chance to Save Great Apes from Extinction
Conservationists Launch Desperate Effort to
Stop Humanity Killing Closest Relatives
by Tim Radford
An international push to save the great apes - the gorilla,
orang-utan and chimpanzee - from extinction is being launched
today by UN chiefs and environmental campaigners.
All three species are
in serious danger. The great apes survival
project - known as Grasp - will target 23 countries in Africa
and south-east Asia where apes survive. Habitats are being
disturbed by farmers and miners, and destroyed by loggers,
and the apes are being killed for food.
"The clock is
standing at one minute to midnight for the
great apes," said Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations
environmental programme (Unep). "Some experts estimate
that in as little as five to 10 years they will be extinct
across most of their range.
"Local extinctions
are happening rapidly and each one is a
loss to humanity, a loss to the local community and a hole
torn in the ecology of our planet. We can no longer stand by
and watch these wondrous creatures, some of whom share
over 98% of the DNA found in humans, die out."
Botanists reckon that
up to a third of the flowering plants
on the planet could be at risk. Zoologists predict that
perhaps a quarter to a half of all animal species could
vanish in the next century. Complex creatures have been
evolving and going extinct for more than 600m years, but
even conservative estimates put modern extinction rates
at up to 1,000 times higher than earlier eras.
Decades ago, wildlife
groups saw the danger, and tried
to preserve the wilderness for the large, glamorous
species - the panda, the tiger, the elephant and the apes.
The reasoning was that large reserves safe for apes or
tigers would also shelter many thousands of other species.
But even in the reserves
in China, panda numbers are falling.
The big cats of Asia are also declining. A century ago,
there were at least a million chimpanzees in Africa.
At present rates of decline, they could all have perished
by 2010 or 2020. The chimpanzees are humanity's closest
relatives, while gorillas and orang-utans are rather more
distant cousins. The great zoos of the world have begun
to see themselves as "Noah's arks" which will have to
keep
a population of captive apes alive when all the wild apes
have perished.
Ian Redmond, of the
Bristol charity Ape Alliance, said:
"During this year, thousands more orang-utans have been
killed or driven from their forests by illegal loggers,
thousands more gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos (pygmy
chimpanzees) have been killed for bushmeat to feed miners,
loggers or the insatiable urban markets, and wardens have
lacked the means to do their job to protect even those apes
living in national parks."
One population of eastern
lowland gorillas in the war-ravaged
Democratic Republic of the Congo is known to have halved
to around 110 to 130. One population in the Cross river
region of Nigeria is down to about 150. The forest
is threatened by loggers, and has already been damaged
by wildfire.
Grasp will work with
Ape Alliance, the World Wide Fund
for Nature and other campaigning groups to extend protected
areas, equip wardens and rangers and educate local people
in the economic potential, as tourist attractions, of
the great apes that live nearby. There is another pay-off
for preserving the gorilla.
"Too few people
who depend on the forests for fuel, building
materials, medicinal plants and food, are aware of the role
gorillas play in regenerating woodlands by dispersing seeds
and pruning trees," said Heather Eaves of the Bushmeat Crisis
Task Force. "Along with elephants, apes are the gardeners
of the African and south-east Asian forests."
Unep is launching the
campaign with $150,000. Robert Hepworth,
a biodiversity expert with Unep, puts the cost of the Grasp
programme at $1m.
"But the world
has a special duty to save the great apes and
by saving them we will also be saving a whole raft of animal
and plant species which exist in their remaining habitat,"
he said.
Endangered:
numbers dwindle
- Gorillas live for
up to 50 years in the wild. There are three
subspecies of this gentle, vegetarian giant. The two lowland
subspecies are counted in tens of thousands, but mountain gorillas
are counted in hundreds. World Conservation Monitoring scientists
say there could be no more than 126,000 in all.
- The orang-utan has
a huge range but is under threat everywhere
in its Indonesian home. It lives for about 40 years. Experts
say there could be fewer than 20,000 left.
- There are two species
of chimpanzee. Once thought to be entirely
vegetarian, this animal - which shares more than 98% of its DNA
with humans - is a sociable omnivore with a lifespan of about
50 years. Numbers are put at between 100,000 and 200,000.
© Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2001
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