Scientists warn that wild ape
populations, already devastated by poachers and habitat loss, now face a new
threat from Ebola and other viruses
Sunday 10 April
201600.05 BST
Vaccine campaigns to protect wild
chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans could be the only hope of preventing the
planet’s remaining great apes from suffering catastrophic population crashes,
scientists have warned.
They say that recent surveys of
several populations of great apes have revealed devastating drops in numbers
and that protective steps must now be taken as a matter of urgency.
One
report, published last week, revealed that numbers of Grauer’s gorilla, the
largest of all the great apes, had plunged from 17,000 to fewer than 4,000 over
the past 20 years. Other reports have said that devastating forest fires in
Indonesia, in addition to the spread of palm oil plantations, have wiped out
thousands of square miles of rainforest, the home of the orang-utan. Again,
species numbers have plummeted.
“Several factors are involved in
the terrible losses that are occurring in our fellow great apes,” said Peter
Walsh, a primate ecologist at Cambridge. “However, diseases – some spread by
humans – are the ones that we can do most about in the short term.”
Three main human-induced impacts
are blamed for the devastation of great ape numbers in recent years:
■ Habitat
loss. Swaths of jungle in Asia have been turned to palm oil plantations and
have brought the orang-utan to the edge of extinction in many areas. Now oil
companies are eyeing up central Africa for
similar treatment;
■ Bushmeat.
Eating chimpanzee and gorilla meat has become a widespread source of protein in
several countries in central Africa and has depleted numbers further;
■ Disease.
Epidemics such as Ebola fever
have affected humans, but also chimps and gorillas. The latter suffered a death
toll of tens of thousands during the last outbreak.
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