Guest guest Posted April 16, 2002 Report Share Posted April 16, 2002 ***************************Advertisement*************************** TechCentral http://star-techcentral.com ***************************************************************** This message was forwarded to you by yitzeling. Comment from sender: the great ape story This article is from thestar.com.my URL: http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2002/4/16/features/liape1 & sec=fe\ atures ________________________ Tuesday, April 16, 2002 The hope ... By TAN CHENG LI TIME is running out for the great apes of the world. As their habitats are reduced, degraded and fragmented, ape populations have fallen, often dramatically. The remaining scattered populations of great apes – the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orang-utans – are further threatened by war and conflict, habitat destruction caused by mining, agriculture, logging, forest fires, and poaching for trophies, souvenirs, and meat. There are predictions that some species could virtually disappear from most of their range within a decade. A global effort is now underway to pull great apes from the brink of extinction. Led by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Great Apes Survival Project, or GRASP, aims to bring world-wide attention to the ape crisis, raise funds for conservation, and develop a global conservation strategy for all great ape populations. It targets 23 countries where great apes are still found – 21 in Africa and two in South-East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia). “There used to be more countries with great ape populations but chimpanzees have become extinct in several African countries in the past few decades,’’ says wildlife consultant Ian Redmond, who directs the technical operations of GRASP. “The projection is that if we carry on as we have been doing, most great ape populations will disappear within the next 10 to 20 years. We will be down to tiny remnant population in heavily protected forests, which is effectively extinction as there is no viable population to reproduce.” Redmond, who is chairman of the Britain-based Ape Alliance and who was in Malaysia in January, says that conservationists, through GRASP, hope to raise the profile of great apes and their plight. As a start, the UN has appointed a Special Envoy for Great Apes to champion the initiative: distinguished scientist Dr Russell Mittermeier, president of the Washington DC-based Conservation International. This is only the second time in history that the UN has an envoy for a non-human subject. The first time was the envoy for rhino conservation in the early 1990s. Several of the world’s foremost primate experts have been roped in to champion the cause of the apes. They include, among others, Dr Jane Goodall who is best known for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, Japanese primate resear-cher Dr Toshisada Nishida and, of course, Redmond, well-known for his conservation work on gorillas, elephants and rhinos. World-renowned conservationist Richard Leakey, former head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service, has been appointed special adviser to GRASP. During his visit here in January, Redmond, who had studied mountain gorillas in Rwanda together with the late Dian Fossey, met officials from the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry, the wildlife departments of Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak, as well as conservation groups to garner support for the ape initiative. He says the meetings were positive and he is optimistic that Malaysia will join the project. As great apes are distributed mainly in the African continent – apart from the African continent, they are found only in Indonesia and Malaysia – there is a tendency to view them as an African problem. But they are not, as both regions face similar conservation issues. “The two regions can learn from and support each other. The hope is that a global strategy will be greater than the sum of individual parts,” says Redmond. Current conservation efforts are conducted in a piecemeal fashion, depending on the availability of opportunities and resources. Such efforts will have a greater impact if they were part of a systematic prioritised approach. Resources can then be targeted more effectively and neglected areas can be identified. Hence the GRASP initiative aims to help countries prepare and implement national Great Ape Survival Plans, and to obtain funding for the efforts. Redmond says a public relations project has just been launched in Indonesia to get people talking about orang-utans, which will, in turn, hopefully halt the animals’ declining figures. The conservation strategies must also be integrated with the development objectives of states and be sympathetic to the needs of local communities. So, says Redmond, it is important for participating governments to consult with timber companies, communities, tour operators, conservation groups and other stakeholders in their ape conservation strategies. He hopes to convince timber companies, whose concessions infringe into ape habitats, that ape protection is not a threat to their interests but will benefit them in the long term as it helps keep the forest ecology intact. “For conservation to succeed, you need three things: political will, support from people, particularly those dealing directly with the issues, and resources. You can have any two of those but, like a tripod missing a leg, it will still fall over. You need the three.” Ape-watching GRASP advocates ape-related tourism as one conservation strategy. “Observing great apes in the wild is a remarkable experience and has proven to be profitable for some countries as visitors stay in hotels, buy souvenirs, and farmers grow vegetables to supply to tourist lodges,” says Redmond. “The fact that great apes are our closest relative mean that people find them fascinating. The mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Uganda are one of the mainstay of those countries’ economies.” In Rwanda, each tourist pays US$250 (RM950) just to observe – not touch or interact with – a family of gorillas. To avoid disturbing the gorillas, only eight people can make the trip each day, which means that a family of gorillas can earn the Rwandan Government US$2,000 (RM7,600) a day. Where great ape tourism has been developed properly, for instance in Uganda’s Bwindi and Kibale Forest national parks, the animals have become an important source of revenue to local communities – they are worth more alive, than dead. However, laments Redmond, there is little of this kind of tourism development for orang-utans. “There are rehabilitation centres where people can go to see orang-utans but they have not been developed in ways that bring in high revenue for parks and local communities.” In the Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan, for example, the entry ticket costs a mere US$0.20 (76 sen) while the Sepilok Orang-utan Sanctuary in Sabah charges RM10 per entry. Redmond suggests that entry fees be raised and a tourism package where small groups of visitors get a personal experience with orang-utans, be developed. “I’ve taken people to see gorillas for 20 years and this is not mass tourism,” he asserts. In Uganda, visitor fees are high because of demand and limited places. Furthermore, the gorilla tourism directly benefits the people as 20% of the income goes to a community trust fund and the locals decide how the money is used, for example for new roads or a new school. Redmond cautions, however, that ape-related tourism must be strictly controlled. In Rwanda and Uganda, he says human visitors are kept apart from the gorillas to prevent infecting them with human diseases. “The possibility is the other way too, but the greatest danger for an endangered animal is when someone with a new strain of flu sneezes at them. The gorillas could die from it.” In instances where orang-utans are used as a tourist attraction, it has to be done in a respectful manner. Getting orang-utans to pose for photographs with visitors – a so-called attraction at a water theme park in Bukit Merah, Perak – is definitely not respectful. Redmond points to an article in the magazine Wildlife that criticises the park. The park had also advertised in another local magazine that visitors can have lunch with orang-utans. “It’s exploitation. It does not respect the orang-utans and their role in the forest. The message that visitors take home is that orang-utans are cute and ‘Hey, it’s fun to have your picture taken with the orang-utan’. The message here is not that orang-utans are endangered and we need to protect them. “And for the orang-utan to be present whenever someone wants to have a picture taken means that the animal will be handled. They are very strong individuals who don’t always do what you tell them to. In a situation like this, there is always cruelty involved. There are more benign ways of profiting from orang-utans which are good for them, for conservation and for communities.” Need for funds To protect great apes and their habitats, the UN Environment Programme has to raise some US$3mil (RM11.4mil) for the first two years of the project. This first phase will culminate in a conference sometime next year and a UN declaration on great apes to help raise the profile of the initiative. The United States in 2000 passed a Great Ape Conservation Act, pledging funds for conservation and initiates. Similarly, Britain has declared support for GRASP. While there are small glimmers of hope as there are ongoing efforts to lessen the pressures on the great apes, the urgency of the situation demands a higher level of action. Local extinctions are happening rapidly, and each one is a loss to humanity and a hole torn in the ecology of our planet. Paleo-anthropologist Richard Leakey put his finger on it when he pointed out that if man were to suddenly discover a surviving population of Neanderthals or some species of human that is now only known from fossil records, he would certainly do anything to ensure survival of that species as he would learn so much about himself. “And effectively, the great apes are that. They are man’s closest living relative and it would be so stupid for us to wipe out a species which would teach us the most about ourselves. “Over the past 20 to 30 years, field work and understanding on great apes have grown. But at the same time, their numbers have declined dramatically. So, just as we are beginning to know our cousins, we are wiping them out,” says Redmond. To learn more about great apes, go to <a href= " www.unep.org/grasp " >www.unep.org/grasp</a>, <a href= " www.orangutan.org.uk " >www.orangutan.org.uk</a>, <a href= " www.bornfree.org.uk " >www.bornfree.org.uk</a>, and <a href= " www.4apes.com " >www.4apes.com</a> FACT FILE <UL> <LI>ORANG-UTANS are found in two countries, gorillas in nine, chimpanzees in 21 (all those with gorillas also have chimpanzees) and bonobos in just one (the Democratic Republic of Congo). <LI>Gorillas live for up to 50 years in the wild. There are three subspecies of this gentle, vegetarian giant. <LI>The orang-utan has a huge range but is under threat everywhere in its Indonesian home. It lives for about 40 years. Experts say there could be fewer than 20,000 left. <LI>There are two species of chimpanzee. Once thought to be entirely vegetarian, this animal is a sociable omnivore with a lifespan of about 50 years. Numbers are put at between 100,000 and 200,000. <LI>Over the last 50 years, scientists have gained a greater understanding of apes. Captive studies have demonstrated that apes possess self-awareness, remarkable intelligence and an ability to communicate with signs and symbols. Geneticists startled the world by discovering that chimpanzees and bonobos share 98.4% of man’s DNA, gorillas 97.7% and orang-utans 96.4%. <LI>Apes are protected by national law in every country they inhabit, but most ape range-states lack enforcement capacity. Even in officially protected areas, poaching, illegal logging and mining all impact on vulnerable ape populations. <LI>All apes are listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora that bans international trade for primarily commercial purposes. But the lucrative price for captive apes is a constant lure to illegal traders and hunters. Likewise, illegal bushmeat trade, a proportion of which involves ape meat, continues largely unchecked in Africa. – Great Apes Survival Project</UL> ________________________ Your one-stop information portal: The Star Online http://thestar.com.my http://biz.thestar.com.my http://classifieds.thestar.com.my http://cards.thestar.com.my http://search.thestar.com.my http://star-motoring.com http://star-space.com http://star-jobs.com http://star-ecentral.com http://star-techcentral.com 1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Star Publications is prohibited. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.