Britain backs drive to save great apes from extinction
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Your support makes all the difference.Britain is putting money into an international campaign to save the four great apes - the gorilla, chimpanzee, pigmy chimpanzee and orang-utan - from being driven to extinction, the Government announced yesterday.
All ape species are now seen as being in serious danger from a combination of threats to their forest habitat, which is being destroyed by logging and development, and direct hunting for "bush meat", which is becoming increasingly common in Africa.
The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has set up an emergency project, known as the Great Apes Survival Project (Grasp), to protect them, and yesterday the British Government donated £175,000, a tenth of the project's initial budget.
Announcing the funding, Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, said that great apes were "the closest species to man, they share between 96 to 98.5 per cent of our DNA, yet they are now close to extinction in many areas". He said some experts predicted they would be extinct within five to 10 years.
The biggest slice of British funding, £50,000, will go towards conserving mountain gorillas on the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. There are thought to be only 620 left, making them one of the world's most endangered species.British funds will also help a gorilla sanctuary in Nigeria (£20,000), chimpanzee protection in the Ivory Coast (£15,000), and education for local people to conserve great apes in Cameroon (£15,000).
Mr Meacher was asked if he believed African and Asian countries struggling with desperate human poverty could realistically devote much attention to their wildlife. "We have a commitment to do whatever we can to halve absolute levels of world poverty by 2015, but the fact is that animals, particularly primates like the great apes, are part of the ecosystem which is shared by humans, and the preservation of primates is part of preserving the whole ecosystem on which those countries depend," he replied.
"They are, of course, also important for tourism, which brings in substantial sums of money. The countries of Africa and Asia would be impoverished by losing their great apes."
Gorillas, chimpanzees and pigmy chimpanzees all range across central and west Africa, and hunting for "bush meat" may now be the greatest threat. There were 55 cases of people illegally importing chimpanzee meat into Britain in the last year, Mr Meacher said.
Orang-utans are the great apes of Asia and their habitat has been enormously damaged by fires, especially the huge forest fires of recent years that have ravaged Kalimantan and Indonesian Borneo.
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