Apes face extinction in 50 years, says UN
CONSERVATIONISTS urgently need 21.5 million to save great apes from the threat of extinction, the United Nations said yesterday.
The UN cultural and environmental agencies said the money was also needed to establish areas where ape populations could stabilise and increase their numbers.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said that the sum was a minimum "the equivalent of providing a dying man with bread and water".
"The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes, animals that share more than 96% of their DNA with humans," he said in a statement released at the opening of a meeting on great apes in Paris.
"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," he added.
UNEP and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) said that every great ape species gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans face a high risk of extinction.
Growing human populations, wars, meat poaching, trade in live animals and destruction of forests were the main reasons for declines in populations.
In Senegal, only 200 to 400 wild chimpanzees exist. In Ghana, there are between 300 to 500 left, and Guinea Bissau has less than 200 chimps. Research shows that chimpanzee populations have already disappeared from Benin, Gambia and Togo.
UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura said another priority was the forests the apes live in, which provide them with food, water and medicine.
"Saving the great apes and the ecosystems they inhabit is not just a conservation issue but a key action in the fight against poverty," Matsuura said.
The meeting in Paris on UNESCO and UNEP's joint Great Apes Survival Project brings together representatives from nations with great ape populations, donor countries, and conservation groups.
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