EMERGENCY APPEAL FOR SURVIVAL OF GREAT APES

UN's clarion call for great apes
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Satellites are pinpointing gorilla forests
The clock now stands at one minute to midnight for the world's four
great ape species, the United Nations says.

It is launching an appeal for $25m, the minimum it says is needed to
avert their extinction within a few decades.

All the apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimps), and
orang-utans - face a very high risk of extinction within 50 years at
most, the UN says.

It hopes to establish areas where ape populations can stabilise or
even grow, if it manages to raise enough money.

The appeal is being launched at a meeting in the French capital,
Paris, on 26 November. It has been called by Unesco (the UN
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and Unep, the UN
Environment Programme.

Shared inheritance 

The two agencies, the co-ordinators of Grasp, the Great Apes Survival
Project, have invited delegates from the 23 African and south-east
Asian states where the apes live, and from possible donor countries.

Time is short for all the apes
Dr Klaus Toepfer, Unep's executive director, said: "$25 million is the
bare minimum we need, the equivalent of providing a dying man with
bread and water.

"The great apes share more than 96% of their DNA with humans. 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."

Unesco's director-general, Koichiro Matsuura, said: "Great apes form a
unique bridge to the natural world. The forests they inhabit are a
vital resource for humans everywhere.

"Saving the great apes and the ecosystems they inhabit is not just a
conservation issue, but a key action in the fight against poverty."

Contending with humans

Unesco says research suggests the western chimpanzee has already
disappeared from Benin, Togo and Gambia, and could soon vanish from
another west African country, Senegal.

There are only about 2-400 chimpanzees left there, slightly more in
Ghana, and fewer than 200 in Guinea-Bissau.

The main threats to all the apes are of human origin: war, poaching,
and the live animal trade.

Human encroachment into the forests is increasing, and outright forest
destruction leaves them no hiding place.

If road-building, construction of mining camps and other development
continues at present levels, Unep says, less than 10% of the remaining
forest where the African apes live will be left relatively undisturbed
by 2030.

Checking forest loss

By then, it says, there will be almost no habitat left intact in
south-east Asia, raising acute fears for the orang-utan's survival.

 Because many great apes live in remote and inaccessible areas, Unesco
is working with the European Space Agency to use satellites or remote
sensing to monitor how fast ape habitat is disappearing.

The project is initially mapping the habitat of the mountain gorilla.
Only about 600 survive in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC).

It will also compare satellite image archives to assess changes in
gorilla habitat since 1992 in the Virunga National Park (DRC) and
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (Uganda).

Natural foresters

Unesco is working with local rangers on improving law enforcement and
monitoring in all five of the DRC's world heritage sites, which are
home to several great ape species.

But Samy Mankoto of Unesco said: "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. The apes play a key role in maintaining the health and
diversity of tropical forests, which people depend upon.

"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."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3237726.stm

Great Apes Survival Project:

http://www.unep.org/grasp/

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