AR-News: Chimps nearing extinction, study warns

[jim robertson]

Chimps nearing extinction, study warns
Orphan data suggests one species could be gone in 20 years
Chimpanzees like these in West Africa are classified among the most 
endangered species because of man-made threats like logging and hunting.

Updated: 10:19 a.m. ET June 08, 2004JOHANNESBURG - Humanity’s closest 
relative, the chimpanzee, could be extinct in around 50 years because it is 
hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and disease, researchers 
said on Tuesday.

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Only 8,000 remain of the most vulnerable chimpanzee subspecies, the Pan 
troglodytes vellerosus, which is found predominantly in Nigeria, and it 
could be extinct in two decades, according to a new study.

The study was presented at a conference of The Pan African Sanctuaries 
Alliance in Johannesburg. PASA sanctuaries care for orphaned or injured 
great apes.

“It is believed that the illegal hunting and eating of apes -- known as the 
bushmeat crisis -- has had the greatest impact on the rate of decline, along 
with deforestation, human encroachment and disease,” PASA said in a 
statement.

'More critical than we thought'
“The situation is much more critical than we thought,” said Norm Rosen, an 
anthropologist at California State University-Fullerton who coordinated the 
study.

The study used the rate of orphans brought by people to sanctuaries to 
calculate the loss of chimpanzees in the wild -- and showed a dramatic 
increase in the number of baby chimps losing their parents.

Rosen’s study estimates that 10 chimpanzees in the wild are killed for every 
orphan that reaches a sanctuary and predicts that the vellerosus subspecies 
will become extinct in the next 17-23 years.

The other three chimpanzee subspecies face slightly better odds but, at 
current estimated rates of decline, all are expected to disappear in 41-53 
years.

“The numbers at the sanctuaries don’t lie. You don’t get the kind of steady 
stream of orphaned chimpanzees we’re seeing without a devastating drop in 
the wild population,” said Rosen.

50 percent more orphaned chimps
Chimpanzees are found in western, central and eastern Africa.

The 19 PASA sanctuaries currently care for approximately 670 chimpanzees, a 
number that has risen by more than 50 percent in the last three years.

The study is the latest to sound the alarm about the fate of the great apes, 
which consist of chimps, gorillas, bonobos and the orangutans of Asia.

One recent UN study said less than 10 percent of the forest home of Africa’s 
great apes will be left relatively undisturbed by 2030 if road building, 
construction of mining camps and other infrastructure developments continue 
at current levels.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5164411/

"The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak 
the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not 
believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads." -- Edward Abbey