Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Orangutans Fighting for Survival
11/21/97
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Headline: Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Orangutans Fighting for Survival
Source: Agence France-Presse
Date: 11/21/97
Copyright 1997 by Agence France-Presse
NAIROBI, Nov 21 (AFP) - Felled in the cross-fires of war, hunted
for food, money and sport, Africa's great apes -- the chimpazee,
gorilla, and orang-utan, are facing extinction, the World Wildlife
Fund (WWF) warned Friday.
The WWF appealled to the international community to act before
it is too late.
"The greatest dangers are the destruction of the forests,
uncontrolled hunting and illegal trafficking," said the WWF in a
report issued by its regional bureau in Nairobi.
The most immediately threatened of man's closest living
relatives, said the report, is the mountain gorilla, whose habitat
happens to be in a war zone between Rwanda, the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) and Uganda.
Only about 620 of these gorillas remain, refugees from years of
civil war and massive refugee migrations that have ravaged their
natural habitat.
There are about 111,000 western plains gorillas remaining, said
the WWF, and only about 10,000 eastern plains gorillas, which are
found only in the east of the DRC.
At the end of 1996, "all the infrastructure of the Virungas
National Park (in DRC) were sacked and all the equipment stolen or
smashed."
In the same sector, "an eastern plains gorilla was killed by
soldiers and sold as bush meat in the local market."
The WWF said it had raised money to rebuild the park's
infrastructure and called on authorities to keep hostilities clear
of the protected zones.
"But in May 1997, a family of four mountain gorillas was caught
in a shootout and killed in the Virungas National Park," said the
report.
Not far from there, "the survival of small populations of
long-haired chimpanzees of Burundi and Rwanda are threatened by
famine and the widespread insecurity in those countries."
The WWF report said the rate of forest destruction was such
that, in Malaysia and Indonesia, only two percent of the
orang-utan's natural habitat remained intact.
Africa, it said, was the world's third largest exporter of
trees.
In DRC, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, the forests could
disappear entirely in 50 to 70 years.
The amplitude of trafficking in bush meat, particulalry in
Africa, is "worrying," said the WWF.
"Hunting plains gorillas and chimpanzees for their meat has
become highly lucrative. Today, gorilla meat is available smoked and
in ragout on the menus of restaurants in all the big cities from
Cameroon to Congo and sometimes even on expatriate dinner tables in
Brussels and Paris."
The traffic in live monkeys, however, is on the decline, "at
least concerning certain primates," said the WWF. For others, like
the orang-utan, "demand remains high in Asia, notably in Indonesia,
where they are sought after as pets."
"The countries that are home to the great apes, principally in
Africa, lake sufficient technical and financial means to devote to
development and protection programs."
The international community, the report said, has an obligation
to provide the necessary assistance. "In order to safeguard the
remaining populations ... decisive action is imperative."