Great Ape Extinction Focus of Emergency UN Meeting

PARIS, France, November 26, 2003 (ENS) - Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans - every one of the great ape species is at high risk of extinction, in the immediate future or at best within 50 years. Today, an international crisis meeting convened by the United Nations opened in Paris in an attempt to raise $25 million that is the absolute minimum needed to keep them alive.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), coordinators of the Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP), say that if urgent action is not taken extinction is imminent for humankind's closest living relatives.

"The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes, animals that share more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer.

"I doubt if there is any challenge of greater importance than that presented by the current status of the great apes," said Richard Leakey of Kenya, world famous conservationist and palaeoanthropologist and one of GRASP's patrons.

"Conservationists and governments must come together to put the necessary measures in place to ensure that the bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are saved from extinction. This must be the point of departure for the Paris meeting," Leakey said.

Chimpanzee mother and baby in the Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage, Zambia (Photo courtesy WWF)

"Research indicates that the western chimpanzee has already disappeared from three countries - Benin, the Gambia and Togo," said Samy Mankoto, a UNESCO expert on biosphere reserves in Africa, which are home to several great ape populations.

Senegal, where just 200 to 400 wild chimpanzees remain, could be the next country to see them go extinct, GRASP experts warn.

Human activities are crowding chimpanzees into extinction, and delegates learned that Ghana has just 300 to 500 chimpanzees left, and Guinea-Bissau has less than 200 individual animals.

The orangutans of Southeast Asia face an even more perilous future. Recent UNEP research indicates that within 28 years there will be almost no orangutan habitat left that can be considered relatively undisturbed.

Growing human encroachment on their habitat, civil wars, poaching for meat, the live animal trade, and the destruction of their forest habaitats are responsible for the increasing likelihood of extinction for the great apes.

"Great apes form a unique bridge to the natural world," said Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO director-general. "The forests they inhabit are a vital resource for humans everywhere, and for local people, in particular, a key source of food, water, medicine as well as a place of spiritual, cultural and economic value. Saving the great apes and the ecosystems they inhabit is not just a conservation issue but a key action in the fight against poverty."

UNESCO has a network of more than 400 biosphere reserves in over 90 countries, many of which have important populations of great apes. These species are also still found in dozens of UNESCO World Heritage Sites that can offer some degree of protection to the apes due to their status as heritage sites.

This mother and baby represent the few remaining gorillas in the wild. (Photo courtesy Great Ape Project)

The project has begun by mapping the habitats of the mountain gorilla. Only about 600 are alive in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The project will compare satellite image archives to assess changes in gorilla habitats since 1992 in the Virunga National Park in the DRC and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Parc National des Volcans in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda may soon join this list.

But money is needed to carry out this and other ape survival strategies. "Twenty-five million dollars is the bare minimum we need, the equivalent of providing a dying man with bread and water," Toepfer said.

The funds are needed for law enforcement and also for research. "Law enforcement is an essential but single element in any conservation effort. We cannot just put up fences to try and separate the apes from people," said Mankoto.

"Great apes play a key role in maintaining the health and diversity of tropical forests, which people depend upon," he said. "They disperse seeds throughout the forests, for example, and create light gaps in the forest canopy which allow seedlings to grow and replenish the ecosystem."

Studies are underway in several UNESCO biosphere reserves that are home to chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan. One of the most important populations of wild chimpanzees lives in the Taï Biosphere Reserve in Côte d'Ivoire, where a team of zoologists has been studying their behavior since 1979.

Orangutans are the only great apes outside Africa. They live in dwindling forested habitats on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. (Photo courtesy GRASP)

A newly published UNEP study estimates that around 28 percent, or some 204,900 square kilometers of remaining gorilla habitat, can be classed as relatively undisturbed. But if infrastructure growth continues at current levels, the area left by 2030 is estimated to be 69,900 square kilometres or just 10 percent.

The study, "Great Apes - the road ahead" is edited by Dr. Christian Nellemann of UNEP's GRID-Arendal in Norway and Dr. Adrian Newton of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK.

Funding is also needed for building the capacity of the countries inhabited by great apes, known as range states, to conserve them. Since it was launched in May 2001, GRASP has seen 16 of the 23 great ape range states apply new conservation measures designed for these species.

Policymaking workshops have been held in six of these countries, bringing together stakeholders from government, academia and private industry as well as NGOs and the United Nations. National plans have emerged from these workshops detailing exactly how the necessary funds can be applied to make a real difference to ape numbers on the ground.

All these activities are essential to great ape survival. Toepfer warns, "If we lose any great ape species we will be destroying a bridge to our own origins, and with it part of our own humanity."

A list of GRASP partners can be found at www.unep.org/grasp/partners.asp.

"Great Apes - the road ahead" is online at: http://www.globio.info/download.cfm?File=region/africa/GRASP_5.pdf