December 5, 2003<\/p>\n
K. Lee Lerner<\/p>\n
At a November meeting in Paris, scientists and other leaders from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) endorsed a call by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to mount what may be a last-ditch effort prevent extinction of the world\u2019s remaining four great ape species (i.e., gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans).<\/p>\n
Klaus Toepfer, UNEP Executive Director and a special advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, issued a dramatic statement declaring, \u201c\u2026the clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes\u2026\u201d Toepfer pointed out that apes are our closest genetic relatives, sharing more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans. \u201cIf we lose any great ape species, we will be destroying a bridge to our own origins and with it, part of our own humanity,\u201d Toepfer said.<\/p>\n
The Paris summit also lays the foundation for the development of a Global Great Ape Conservation Strategy and an inter-governmental ministerial conference on great apes to be held in late 2004.<\/p>\n
UNESCO and UNEP, coordinators of the Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP) declared an immediate need to raise at least $25 million dollars, principally to aid ongoing programs and as a start toward the establishment of additional reserve areas where ape populations can stabilize and perhaps, in the future, increase. UNESCO has a network of more than 400 biosphere reserves in more than 90 countries, many of which provide habitat for great apes.<\/p>\n
Despite prior conservation efforts, over the next half-century, forecasts indicate that all ape species will face high risk of extinction. For some, extinction may be close at hand.\u00a0 Western chimpanzees, one of the four sub-species of chimps, for example, may have already disappeared from reserves in the Togo, Benin, and Gambia. Only a few hundred of the chimpanzees are estimated to remain in Senegal and similar numbers are reported to remain from once vastly larger populations in areas such as Ghana and Guinea Bissau. Across western Africa, estimates of western chimpanzee populations have fallen from 600,000 to as few as 25,000.<\/p>\n
Anthropologist Richard Leaky, who along with fellow famous primatologists and conservationists Jane Goodall, Russ Mittermeier and Toshisada Nishida, forms a patron core of GRASP “Ape Envoys” to raise the profile of the cause, said that \u201cconservationists 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\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
GRASP is registered with the Commission for Sustainable Development as a partnership under the World Summit for Sustainable Development. As a WSSD partnership, GRASP is charter to develop strategies to protect great apes and their habitat. GRASP seeks to protect all of the two dozen range states of the Great Apes and draw up national recovery action plans in collaboration with local and national governments, a range of NGO\u2019s including wildlife activist groups and local citizens.<\/p>\n
GRASP also hopes to bolster the efforts of international law enforcement agencies and enforcement of agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.<\/p>\n
Despite its high profile international support, one important aim of GRASP is to foster the appreciation of the need for conservation at the local level. By showing communities that they have a direct stake in conservation, they can profit from sustainable use of local resources (e.g., spurring proper harvesting of forests, or promoting ecotourism). For example, great apes also play a key role in the long-term ecosystem of the forest. Apes disperse seeds through the forest and create import gaps in the canopy that allow light to reach seedlings.<\/p>\n
The fall in the populations of great apes continues despite hundreds of millions of dollars previously invested in forest protection in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and Gabon by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and a number of other governments. Around the world, all ape populations face mounting extinction pressures due to human activity. Forest habitats are disappearing under the steady advance of economic utilization of resources by logging and mining interests. Wars and illegal poaching for bushmeat also take a heavy toll. Only about 600 mountain gorillas survive in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<\/p>\n
Infectious disease is also presenting an increasing challenge to ape survival. In addition to stressing ape populations, the increasing proximity of ape habitats to human populations increases the chance of infectious diseases \u2018jumping\u2019 between apes and humans. Apes, especially chimpanzees and gorillas are at risk with regard to normally human infectious diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis, mumps, and measles. Transmission from apes to humans — perhaps via consumption of infected ape meat \u2013 is assumed to play a key role in deadly outbreaks of the Ebola virus in human populations in central Africa. In turn, Ebola also threatens ape populations — including the western lowland gorilla populations. The Worldwide Conservation Union (ICUN), which represents 10,000 government and non-government scientists from more than 180 countries, estimates that in addition to human deaths from Ebola, the virus is estimated to have killed thousands of apes.<\/p>\n
In order to provide the most accurate assessments of the state of habitats that effect population estimates, UNESCO utilizes satellite monitoring and remote sensing data to refine hard-to-obtain data from the forest and bush terrain.<\/p>\n
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