Gorillas under mounting threat
Gorillas in Africa's Greater Congo Basin may become near-extinct within ten years unless action is taken to prevent poaching and to protect their habitat, says a UN-backed report.
BY Regan Doherty Mar 25, 2010
Gorillas in Africa's Greater Congo Basin may become near-extinct within ten years unless action is taken to prevent poaching and to protect their habitat, says a UN-backed report.
BY Regan Doherty Mar 25, 2010
The threat to the gorilla population is particularly critical in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where activity by local militias has hit local gorilla populations, according to the report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol.
Illegal logging, mining, charcoal production and escalating demand for bushmeat, or meat for food, an increasing portion of which is ape meat, have also taken their toll.
Logging and mining camps, believed to have links to militias, are hiring poachers to supply refugees and markets in towns across the region with bushmeat, UNEP said. Trade in smuggled minerals and timber drives the militias' activities, generating between US$14 million and US$50 million annually.
"Gorillas may have largely disappeared from large parts of the Greater Congo Basin by the mid 2020s unless urgent action is taken," the report said.
The study was bleaker than a 2002 UN forecast that only 10 percent of the original gorilla ranges would remain by 2030.
"The gorillas are yet another victim of the contempt shown by organised criminal gangs for national and international laws aimed at defending wildlife," said David Higgins, manager of the Interpol Environmental Crime Programme.
Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, said: "This is a tragedy for the great apes, and one also for countless other species being impacted by this intensifying and all too often illegal trade."
Outbreaks of Ebola fever have also killed thousands of gorillas. Estimates suggest that up to 90 per cent of infected animals die.
The report did have some positive news, of a previously unknown gorilla population.
"A new and as yet unpublished survey in one area of the eastern DRC, in the centre of the conflict zone, has discovered 750 critically endangered Eastern lowland gorillas," it said.
Reuters
Illegal logging, mining, charcoal production and escalating demand for bushmeat, or meat for food, an increasing portion of which is ape meat, have also taken their toll.
Logging and mining camps, believed to have links to militias, are hiring poachers to supply refugees and markets in towns across the region with bushmeat, UNEP said. Trade in smuggled minerals and timber drives the militias' activities, generating between US$14 million and US$50 million annually.
"Gorillas may have largely disappeared from large parts of the Greater Congo Basin by the mid 2020s unless urgent action is taken," the report said.
The study was bleaker than a 2002 UN forecast that only 10 percent of the original gorilla ranges would remain by 2030.
"The gorillas are yet another victim of the contempt shown by organised criminal gangs for national and international laws aimed at defending wildlife," said David Higgins, manager of the Interpol Environmental Crime Programme.
Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, said: "This is a tragedy for the great apes, and one also for countless other species being impacted by this intensifying and all too often illegal trade."
Outbreaks of Ebola fever have also killed thousands of gorillas. Estimates suggest that up to 90 per cent of infected animals die.
The report did have some positive news, of a previously unknown gorilla population.
"A new and as yet unpublished survey in one area of the eastern DRC, in the centre of the conflict zone, has discovered 750 critically endangered Eastern lowland gorillas," it said.
Reuters
