Monkeys, apes face extinction
OSLO:
Almost half the world’s monkeys and apes are facing a worsening threat of
extinction because of deforestation and hunting for meat, an international
report showed on Tuesday.
“We
have solid data to show that the situation is far more severe than we imagined,”
said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of
the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) primate specialist
group. An assessment for an IUCN “Red List” of endangered species found that 48%
of the 634 known species and sub-species of primates, humankind’s closest
relatives such as chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons and lemurs, were at risk of
extinction.
In a previous
report five years ago, using different yardsticks, just 39% of primates were
judged at risk. The IUCN includes governments, scientists and conservation
groups. Habitat destruction, led by burning and clearing of tropical forests for
farmland, and the hunting of monkeys and apes for their meat were the main
threats. Some species were “literally being eaten into extinction,” a statement
said.
“Gorilla meat, chimpanzee
meat and meat of other apes fetches a higher price than beef, chicken or fish”
in some African countries, Mittermeier said. He said that deforestation was
aggravating hunting. Roads cut to help loggers and burning of forests to create
farmland were opening previously inaccessible regions to
poachers.
Primates were
suffering most in Asia, with 71% of all species at risk, against 37% in Africa.
The report was to be released at a conference in Edinburgh,
Scotland.
In south-east Asia,
human populations were higher than in Africa and habitats for orangutans,
gibbons or leaf monkeys were getting ever more fragmented. Demand for pets and
Chinese hunger for traditional medicines were adding
pressures.
Among species most
at risk, or “critically endangered”, were the Bouvier’s red colobus, an African
monkey which has not been seen in 25 years, and the greater bamboo lemur of
Madagascar totaling only about 140 in the
wild.
“If you took all the
individuals of the top 25 most endangered species and assigned each of them a
seat… they probably wouldn’t fill a football stadium,” Mittermeier said.
Chimpanzees stayed “endangered”, the middle of a three-stage scale of risk. The
mountain gorilla, found in jungles in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo, stayed
critically endangered despite a rise in numbers.
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