Treaty offers world's last chance to save great apes

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article311909.ece

 

They are man's closest cousins and they are staring

into the abyss. But in one of the most important

environmental treaties, hope has been offered to stop

the headlong slide towards extinction of humankind's

nearest relatives, the great apes.

 

The agreement signed in Kinshasa, in the Democratic

Republic of Congo, is on a par with the 1982 whaling

moratorium and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate

change. It offers a real chance to halt the

remorseless jungle slaughter of gorillas, chimpanzees,

bonobos [pygmy chimpanzees] and orang-utans, which on

current trends is likely to kill them all off within a

generation.

 

If it succeeds - a big if - it will be the most

significant move yet to counter the greatest

environmental problem facing the world after global

warming, the mass extinction of living species.

Increasingly, the great apes are being seen as the

flagship example of species that have become

endangered. Last year, the African conservationist

Richard Leakey said their image should replace that of

the giant panda as the international icon of

threatened wildlife.

 

The agreement in Kinshasa between the nations where

the animals occur in the wild, the " range states " , and

a group of rich donor countries, led by Britain,

publicly recognises, for the first time at the

international diplomatic level, the unique cultural,

ecological and indeed economic importance of the four

great ape species, which share up to 98.5 per cent of

our DNA.

 

It commits its signatories to a comprehensive global

strategy to save them, which involves setting up much

new legal protection and protection in the field, and

widely clamping down on the illegal hunting, logging

and other practices which are destroying their

habitats and their populations.

 

Furthermore, it sets two ambitious targets: the first

of significantly slowing the loss of great apes and

their forest habitats by 2010, and the second of

securing the future in the wild of all species and

subspecies by 2015.

 

These are enormous tasks. At present the gorillas,

chimpanzees and bonobos of Africa, and the orang-utans

of Asia, are under merciless assault from

deforestation, war, illegal logging and mining, the

captive-animal trade, hunting (they are increasingly

killed for food in some parts of Africa and sold as

" bushmeat " ) and now from emerging diseases such as the

Ebola virus.

 

The 23 range states which contain them, from Angola to

Uganda, are among the poorest in the world,

characterised by extreme poverty, violent conflict and

soaring demand for the extraction of natural

resources. Sixteen of them have a per-capita annual

income of less than $800 (£430). Although in all of

these countries the great apes are protected by law,

wildlife protection and wildlife law enforcement tend

in the nature of things to take a low priority.

 

The result is that ape numbers are tumbling almost

everywhere. Ten days ago the firstWorld Atlas of The

Great Apes was published in London and gave a graphic

and alarming picture of rapidly shrinking ranges and

increasingly isolated populations.

 

As few as 350,000 of all the great apes, which once

numbered in their millions, may now exist in the wild,

and populations of some sub-species are already down

to a few hundred. Some conservationists such as the

chimpanzee specialist Jane Goodall believe they may be

extinct in the wild outside protected areas in the

next two decades.

 

Certainly, if current trends continue, the specialists

who compiled the Atlas believe that, over the next 25

years, 90 per cent of the gorilla range will suffer

medium to high impacts from human development, as will

92 per cent of the chimpanzee range, 96 per cent of

the bonobo range, and no less than 99 per cent of the

orang-utan range.

 

The treaty signed at the weekend is the product of

four years' work by the Great Apes Survival Project

(Grasp), a partnership of the United Nations

Environment Programme (Unep) and the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

(Unesco), which has brought together conservation

scientists, pressure groups, academia, the private

sector and local communities.

 

Grasp has managed to convince virtually all the range

states bar one ­ Malaysia ­ that saving the great apes

is very much in their interests, by stressing that ape

populations can bring enormous economic benefits to

poor communities through eco-tourism. Ten years ago,

for example, before the recent civil war in the DRC

broke out, Virunga National Park, home of the famous

mountain gorillas, was generating $10m a year.

 

The new agreement places ape conservation squarely in

the context of the range states' strategies for

poverty reduction and for developing sustainable

livelihoods.

 

Grasp has also convinced rich Western donor countries

that the poorest nations in the world cannot be

expected to pay entirely out of their own pockets for

saving the great apes. Britain has taken the lead,

providing the first substantial donation to the Grasp

budget in 2002 and helping to fund the week-long

meeting in Kinshasa which culminated in the agreement.

 

It has been signed so far by a total of 23 range

states and donor countries, including Britain, and

remains open for further signatures (all the African

range states, and more donor nations, are expected to

sign).

 

It marks a hugely significant moment, said Ian

Redmond, the British biologist who is Grasp's chief

consultant. " The international community has belatedly

recognised that the future of the great apes is the

responsibility of all humanity, and not just the

countries in which they live, which are among the

poorest in the world, " he said.

 

Conservationists were jubilant at the weekend at the

successful signing of the accord, and in particular at

the lack of dissent in the negotiations which led up

to it. It led to optimism about the greatest remaining

worry ­ can the desperately poor African range states

deliver what they have signed up to?

 

" I think it's achievable, " said Jim Knight, Britain's

Environment minister, who signed the treaty on behalf

of the United Kingdom at the weekend. " I wouldn't have

signed it if I didn't think that. We're proud of the

Kinshasa agreement. It means that our closest

relatives in the animal kingdom now have a chance of a

future. "