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The Great Apes
   
Bonobos-Chimpanzees-Orangutans-Gorillas
Bonobos,
Chimpanzees,
Orangutans and Gorillas are our not so distant cousins in the animal world. They
are intelligent and exhibit feelings and emotions like we do. All
of these great apes are being threatened by
deforestation and poaching. We must
take action to save this part of our "family" now. We are similar in many ways,
but for two, they can not "speak" and they do not destroy the
environment like we do.
 
Great
ape populations are declining at an alarming rate worldwide. The continuing
destruction of habitat, in combination with the growth in the commercial
bushmeat trade in Africa and increased logging activities in Indonesia, have
lead scientists to suggest that the majority of great ape populations may be
extinct in our lifetime. Even if isolated populations were to survive, the
long-term viability of great apes is in doubt due to their limited numbers and
the fragmentation of their habitat. Thus, drastic action is needed. Time is not
on our side.
 
International Initiative To Save Great
Apes Launched By UNEP As Experts Warn That Humankind's Closest Relatives Doomed
Without Urgent Action
Smoked Monkey
Washington/Nairobi- A major international project to save the Great Apes from
extinction is today being launched by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP).
A
Group of Gorillas:Slaughtered
The
initiative, called the Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP), will target
key areas in Africa and South East Asia where humankind's closest
relatives are teetering on the brink as a result of war, habitat
destruction, capturing of live infants for sale and poaching for
trophies, souvenirs and their meat.
Klaus Tòpfer
UNEP Former Executive Director
Klaus
Toepfer, the Former Executive Director of UNEP, said: "A global effort is
now needed to combat this disaster. The clock is standing at one minute
to midnight for the Great Apes. Some experts estimate that in as little
as five to ten 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 a 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 per cent of the DNA found in
humans, die out".
He
called on industry and business to back the initiative which is being
started with US dollars 150,000 from UNEP:" We are working with
wildlife groups and non-governmental organizations, several of whom have
been battling for years to stem the demise of the gorilla, orangutan,
chimpanzee and bonobos. But this needs to be a global effort with many
partners. Goodwill is not enough. The urgency of the situation demands a
higher level of action. We need funding and support from all sectors of
society".
Bananas
& Gorilla Head
Robert
Hepworth, Deputy Director of UNEP's Division of Environmental
Conventions and a biodiversity expert, added: "To get the project
really up and running will require well over US dollars one million. But
the world has a special duty to save the Great Apes and by saving them
we will be also saving a whole raft of animal and plant species who
exist in their remaining habitats".
Ian
Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance which is a coalition of more than
40 conservation organizations, said: "During this year, thousands
more orangutans have been killed or driven from their forests by illegal
loggers, thousands more African apes have been killed for bushmeat to
feed miners, loggers or the insatiable urban markets and thousands of
rangers and wardens have lacked the means to do their job to protect
even those apes living in national parks. New threats are also emerging.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo miners seeking the highly prized
mineral colomo-tantalite or coltan have been pouring into the
Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Okapi Wildlife Reserve which are both
UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The mineral is used in mobile phones,
aircraft engines and micro-chips".
Gorilla Bushmeat
Holly
Dublin, senior conservation officer for WWF said: "While field
political instability remains a threat to mountain gorillas and other
Great Apes in Africa, it has been possible to maintain these populations
through local, regional and international support and
collaboration".
Mr
Redmond added: "UNEP's leadership offers the chance for
governments, non governmental organizations and individuals to act
decisively and together, now, to reverse this decline - not only for the
apes' sake, but for the sake of their human neighbours who benefit from
their presence".
GRASP,
which will be working with Ape Alliance groups including the
International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Born Free Foundation, Fauna
and Flora International, the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force and the World
Wide Fund for Nature, has initially identified five potential programmes
in need of urgent support. It is planned to extend the initiative to all
of the 23 countries that still have Great Apes.
In
some cases projects will include giving rangers and wardens state of the
art communications equipment and vehicles. In some places wildlife
corridors linking fragmented habitats and isolated populations are
needed. Educating local people on the value of Great Apes for
eco-tourism and for protecting forests will also play a key role, the
report argues.
Heather
Eves ,Director of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force said:" 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. Meanwhile 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. Along with
elephants they are the gardeners of the African and south East Asian
forests".
Some
Potential Projects Under GRASP's First Phase The Cross River Gorillas of
the Afi Mountains in Nigeria UNEP estimates that only around 150
individuals are left making the Cross River Gorillas the most critically
endangered in the world. The Afi Mountain population
of Gorilla gorilla diehli numbers about 20.
Threats
include over-logging of their forest home, encroaching agriculture,
hunting, and wild fires as a result of farmland clearance. Efforts have
been made to tackle the threats by groups including Pandrillus, the
Nigerian Cross River State Forestry Commission and Fauna and Flora
International.
Research
indicates that a range of urgent actions are needed including a
community ranger programme to prosecute offenders within the wildlife
sanctuary; the development of fire management strategies; school
education schemes and gorilla monitoring programmes.
Chimpanzees
in the Cote D'Ivoire
There
were once more than one million wild chimpanzees in Africa at the
beginning of the 1900s but at current rates of decline they could be
extinct by 2010 or 2020. Poaching, forest habitat destruction, the
bushmeat trade as well as disease is affecting the animals.
Chimpanzees
just don't understand how humans can be so careless
The
Cote D'Ivoire, which has seven National Parks with chimpanzees including
Tai,Banco, Marahoue and Mont Nimba, contains the largest population of
chimps in West Africa but most live in fragmented and dispersed
populations that have limited prospect of long term survival.
"The
important role chimpanzees have in all traditional African mythologies
and beliefs of the forest regions, as well as the genuine interest
humans have in the chimpanzees, could be used to benefit conservation
measures," UNEP concludes.
A
conservation action plan for each of the key sites is proposed which
would include improving protection for the remaining chimpanzees,
evaluating tree planting schemes to improve their habitat, training
people from local communities to monitor
given
sections of the park and the establishment of education centers where
adults and children are encouraged to actively participate in
conservation.
The
Tanjung Puting National Park, Indonesia Orangutans are in grave danger
of extinction with viable populations lost in as little as ten years.
Their rainforests are being converted to agriculture, including palm oil
plantations, and more recently are threatened
by illegal logging and gold mining in protected areas.
The
Tanjung Puting park is in the province of Central Kalimantan on the
south coast of Borneo. The Orangutan Foundation's Environmental
Monitoring Programme employs local people on foot and in boats to patrol
designated areas to monitor illegal activities
and
negotiate with illegal gold miners and loggers.
UNEP
believes that the eco-tourism potential is significant and would like to
assist the park authorities in the design of an eco-tourism development
programme allied to more organized enforcement.
Mr
Hepworth said it was vital to galvanize all sections of the United
Nations in the effort as well as governments and the corporate sector.
The Environmental Management Group, recently launched by the United
Nations, should tackle the issue, he said.
"The
World Health Organization should have an interest in the fate of the
Great Apes because of their importance along with primates generally in
medical research for the study of the natural history of disease. Some
scientists believe that AIDS may have been spread to humans through the
eating of bushmeat. Who knows what other deadly diseases may be
transmitted to humans if we continue to exploit the Great Apes for food
at current rates," said Mr. Hepworth.
Other
United Nations bodies with a potential interest include United Nations
Development Programme in areas such as of eco-tourism and the Food and
Agricultural Organization because of its interest in food, he suggested.
Gorilla
photographs by Karl Ammann
http://karlammann.com
To
learn more about Bonobos, Chimpanzees,
Orangutans and Gorillas visit and join the following organizations by clicking
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