Humans eating monkeys into extinction

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**Humans eating monkeys into extinction*

6 Aug, 2008, 1104 hrs IST, IANS

 

LONDON: Humans are eating their closest relatives into extinction,

particularly in Southeast Asia, alarmed conservationists have revealed.

 

Nearly half of the world's 634 species of monkeys, apes and other primates

are in danger of going extinct, the world's top experts in primates were

told at a meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

 

According to new data released by the International Union for the

Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at the 22nd International Primatological

Society, 303 of the primates species face the possibility of extinction in

the world, while 69 species are critically endangered.

 

" Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it

appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where

the habitat is still quite intact, " said Russell A. Mittermeier, chairman of

the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Primate Specialist Group.

 

" In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction, " he

added.

 

In Cambodia - the country with the worst record - 90 per cent of the native

primate species are struggling to survive, partly because they are hunted as

ingredients for Chinese traditional medicine.

 

The figure for Vietnam is 86 per cent, Indonesia 84 per cent, Laos 83 per

cent and China 79 per cent.

 

" What is happening in Southeast Asia is terrifying, " said Jean-Christophe

Vié, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme. " To have a group of

animalsunder such a high level of threat is, quite frankly, unlike

anything we have

recorded among any other group of species to date. "

 

Populations of gibbons, leaf monkeys, langurs and other species have

dwindled due to rampant habitat loss exacerbated by hunting for food and to

supply the wildlife trade in traditional Chinese medicine and pets, said the

researchers, whose findings are to be made public in October.

 

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