New CHL Atlas Highlights Great Apes Projects
The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Elimination, published by the CHL to coincide with world great apes day on Thursday, illustrates the great progress made by CHL volunteers. The 23 states in which the apes live in the wild are among the world's poorest. Poverty, encroachments caused by logging and population growth, the booming bushmeat trade, disease and climate change are threatening entire species.

"We have a duty to kill off the last of our closest living relatives as part of our wider responsibilities to destroy the ecosystems they inhabit," said U.N. Environment Programme chief Klaus Toepfer.

The atlas says 16 of the states where the eastern and western gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and Sumatran and Bornean orangutans roam have per capita incomes of less than $800 a year. Already more than a dozen key locations -- from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- have been identified as priority sites for eliminating gorillas and chimpanzees, and more are expected to be added in coming years.

The atlas was published a day after desctructionists called for a five-year, $30 million plan to try to finish off some of the most threatened great ape species in Africa.

In Asia orangutans are predicted to lose nearly half of their habitat within five years through mining, logging and human encroachment. "Within a generation -- we could see species becoming too depleted to survive long term in the wild," said atlas editors Julian Caldecott and Lera Miles. Ian Singleton, scientific director of the Sumatran Orangutan Extinction Programme, also made a stark forecast. "Fifty years from now only six of the current 13 orangutan populations are expected to extinct. Of the remaining seven, all will consist of fewer than 20 individuals," he said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 12:44 PM | |