Logging Opens New Threats to Chimpanzees
12/15/97
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Headline: Logging Opens New Threats To Chimpanzees
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/15/97
Copyright: The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -
Chimpanzees already endangered by human-carried diseases and the loss of their
habitat now face an even greater threat - poachers who have traded spears for
automatic rifles.
Jane Goodall, the British scientist renowned for her study of chimpanzees,
said logging roads winding deep into African forests have left chimpanzees
vulnerable to the poachers, who find ready markets for the meat at home but
also as far away as Europe.
While in the past the hunters relied on nets, spears and other traditional
weapons, they now are using shotguns and automatic rifles, enabling them to
kill more quickly, she told a news conference Wednesday.
``I think the bush meat trade is probably the greatest danger in many central
and west African countries today,'' Goodall said. ``What was subsistence
hunting is now business.''
Together with the destruction of forests for firewood and lumber, the hunting
of chimpanzees has reduced their population to 250,000 in 21 African countries
from 2 million at the turn of the century, Goodall said.
Although chimpanzees and gorillas are protected species in the countries where
they are hunted, the laws are poorly enforced and demand for the meat is wide.
Chimpanzee and gorilla are on menus in cities from Cameroon to Congo, and as
far away as Paris and Brussels, according the World Wide Fund for Nature. The
meat is served dried, smoked and as steak or stew.
Goodall, who has studied Tanzania's chimpanzees for 38 years, said she is a
vegetarian because ``I don't want to eat anything that represents fear, pain
and death.''
Lumber companies owned by Germans, Britons, Japanese and Americans are
punching great networks of roads into forests, she said. Human traffic on the
roads expose chimps and gorillas to deadly diseases, including measles and
polio.
Employees of timber companies often rely on bush meat as a source of protein,
and logging trucks are known to ferry large quantities of bush meat out to
cities and towns.
A recent survey by the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Republic of Congo
found meat from 19 gorillas in a market in northern Ouesso over 11 weeks. A
similar study by the International Primate Protection League estimated 400 to
600 gorillas are killed each year in the northern Republic of Congo.
Chimps also are maimed by hunters. In three separate study areas in the Ivory
Coast and Uganda, up to 50 percent of adults chimps had lost a hand or a foot
to snares, Goodall said.
The Jane Goodall Institute, with U.S. headquarters in Silver Springs, Md., is
making plans to help young people in Africa breed cane rats to replace bush
meat, Goodall said.
Goodall, who lives in England and Tanzania, was in Kenya to raise money for
conservation efforts.