dahunan
Lifer
The world is changing a bit too rapidly for comfort 🙁
The closest relatives to humans - chimps and gorillas - will be on the brink extinction in 10 years.
Children could live in a world without wild apes unless something urgent is done about it, says a Nature journal study.
It's thought they're being hunted for meat, but they are also being killed by the deadly Ebola virus.
The number of apes living in Gabon and the Republic of Congo has dropped to more than half in 20 years, says the study.
Ape populations there were thought to be safer than in other African areas because the jungles weren't disappearing as much.
Meat business
Cutting down jungle areas where they live has been the cause of their falling numbers in the past.
And their meat used to be hunted just for local people, but now the meat business has increased.
Ebola too has spread to a major national park with a huge gorilla population.
Ape experts are really worried because about 80% of the world's chimps and gorillas live in the Congo and Gabon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_2923000/2923753.stm
Double threat decimates apes
Hunting and the Ebola virus killing chimpanzees and gorillas.
7 April 2003
JOHN WHITFIELD
Ebola has killed up to 90% of apes in some areas.
© R. Parwell
Chimpanzees and gorillas in West Africa are caught in a pincer movement between hunting and the Ebola virus, researchers have warned. The bushmeat trade is threatening their populations near towns, while Ebola is killing almost nearly every animal in some remote areas.
In a paper published in this week's Nature, ecologist Peter Walsh of Princeton University, New Jersey, reports that populations of both species have plunged by about half over the past twenty years1. Walsh calls for the conservation status of each to be shifted from 'endangered' to 'critically endangered'.
The finding that apes that live near people are in decline because of hunting confirms the long-standing suspicions of conservation workers. But the extent of Ebola's reach in the ape populations has taken experts by surprise. In one remote area where there is little or no hunting, it has cut the population by more than 90% since 1991.
Everyone agrees that the populations are under threat, but John Oates of the City University of New York, author of the IUCN's 1996 status survey and action plan for African apes, thinks that reclassifying them based on this evidence would be premature. It is not known whether these declines are repeated across Africa, he says, and it is also unclear how the picture might differ between chimpanzees and gorillas.
Government officials in Gabon, where the survey took place, say that chimpanzees and gorillas are already protected there, and that every effort is made to stop illegal hunting. "The population of apes has been quite stable recently," says Pierre Ngavoura, director of water and forests at Gabon's Ministry of Water, Forests, Fisheries and the Environment.
Counting the cost
Walsh's team counted animals by surveying overnight sleeping nests in many areas, giving a combined population for chimpanzees and gorillas. Gorilla populations in neighbouring Congo - the other remaining population stronghold of these apes in West Africa - are thought to be experiencing similarly high mortality.
An experimental Ebola vaccine might work
in apes too.
The Ebola epidemic may be a consequence of high ape population density, says Alexander Harcourt, a primatologist at the University of California, Davis. "The normal density of gorillas is about one every 2 square kilometres," he says. "but in some of these regions there are ten in every square kilometre."
Another possibility, says wildlife-disease expert Andrew Cunningham of the Institute of Zoology in London, is that environmental changes, such as human encroachment on the forest, have brought apes and the virus into more contact. "The mortality suggests that there has been some trigger leading to the emergence of Ebola as an important cause of ape mortality," he says. The Ebola virus is thought to reside in an unidentified reservoir species - possibly a fruit bat or other small mammal.
Spread of disease
Ebola spreads from apes to humans when a hunter kills and eats an animal, or when someone comes into contact with an infected ape corpse. The government in Gabon is seeking to educate its people about the risks of ape hunting, Ngavoura says.
An Ebola outbreak in Gabon killed 50 people between December 2001 and March 2002, mostly in the remote areas where the ape disease is worst. A current outbreak in Congo has killed 120, according to the World Health Organization.
A further potential hazard is created by commercial poachers who hunt bushmeat for sale in urban Africa, says Richard Ruggiero, African programme officer for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. "It's a very dangerous situation in terms of global health," he says. "I don't think there's a city in the world with a West African immigrant population that doesn't receive ape meat."
I don't think there's a city in the world with a West African immigrant population that doesn't receive ape meat
Richard Ruggiero
US Fish and Wildlife Service
Options to control the disease among apes include cutting or digging barriers to quarantine infected populations, moving apes away from where the epidemic is raging, or culling the reservoir species, if it can be identified.
An experimental vaccine has shown good results in monkeys2, and may be ready for human trials in a year or two, says Gary Nabel, director of the US National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. The vaccine might work for apes too, he says. "We'd very much like to use it to help."
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030331/030331-15.html
The closest relatives to humans - chimps and gorillas - will be on the brink extinction in 10 years.
Children could live in a world without wild apes unless something urgent is done about it, says a Nature journal study.
It's thought they're being hunted for meat, but they are also being killed by the deadly Ebola virus.
The number of apes living in Gabon and the Republic of Congo has dropped to more than half in 20 years, says the study.
Ape populations there were thought to be safer than in other African areas because the jungles weren't disappearing as much.
Meat business
Cutting down jungle areas where they live has been the cause of their falling numbers in the past.
And their meat used to be hunted just for local people, but now the meat business has increased.
Ebola too has spread to a major national park with a huge gorilla population.
Ape experts are really worried because about 80% of the world's chimps and gorillas live in the Congo and Gabon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_2923000/2923753.stm
Double threat decimates apes
Hunting and the Ebola virus killing chimpanzees and gorillas.
7 April 2003
JOHN WHITFIELD
Ebola has killed up to 90% of apes in some areas.
© R. Parwell
Chimpanzees and gorillas in West Africa are caught in a pincer movement between hunting and the Ebola virus, researchers have warned. The bushmeat trade is threatening their populations near towns, while Ebola is killing almost nearly every animal in some remote areas.
In a paper published in this week's Nature, ecologist Peter Walsh of Princeton University, New Jersey, reports that populations of both species have plunged by about half over the past twenty years1. Walsh calls for the conservation status of each to be shifted from 'endangered' to 'critically endangered'.
The finding that apes that live near people are in decline because of hunting confirms the long-standing suspicions of conservation workers. But the extent of Ebola's reach in the ape populations has taken experts by surprise. In one remote area where there is little or no hunting, it has cut the population by more than 90% since 1991.
Everyone agrees that the populations are under threat, but John Oates of the City University of New York, author of the IUCN's 1996 status survey and action plan for African apes, thinks that reclassifying them based on this evidence would be premature. It is not known whether these declines are repeated across Africa, he says, and it is also unclear how the picture might differ between chimpanzees and gorillas.
Government officials in Gabon, where the survey took place, say that chimpanzees and gorillas are already protected there, and that every effort is made to stop illegal hunting. "The population of apes has been quite stable recently," says Pierre Ngavoura, director of water and forests at Gabon's Ministry of Water, Forests, Fisheries and the Environment.
Counting the cost
Walsh's team counted animals by surveying overnight sleeping nests in many areas, giving a combined population for chimpanzees and gorillas. Gorilla populations in neighbouring Congo - the other remaining population stronghold of these apes in West Africa - are thought to be experiencing similarly high mortality.
An experimental Ebola vaccine might work
in apes too.
The Ebola epidemic may be a consequence of high ape population density, says Alexander Harcourt, a primatologist at the University of California, Davis. "The normal density of gorillas is about one every 2 square kilometres," he says. "but in some of these regions there are ten in every square kilometre."
Another possibility, says wildlife-disease expert Andrew Cunningham of the Institute of Zoology in London, is that environmental changes, such as human encroachment on the forest, have brought apes and the virus into more contact. "The mortality suggests that there has been some trigger leading to the emergence of Ebola as an important cause of ape mortality," he says. The Ebola virus is thought to reside in an unidentified reservoir species - possibly a fruit bat or other small mammal.
Spread of disease
Ebola spreads from apes to humans when a hunter kills and eats an animal, or when someone comes into contact with an infected ape corpse. The government in Gabon is seeking to educate its people about the risks of ape hunting, Ngavoura says.
An Ebola outbreak in Gabon killed 50 people between December 2001 and March 2002, mostly in the remote areas where the ape disease is worst. A current outbreak in Congo has killed 120, according to the World Health Organization.
A further potential hazard is created by commercial poachers who hunt bushmeat for sale in urban Africa, says Richard Ruggiero, African programme officer for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. "It's a very dangerous situation in terms of global health," he says. "I don't think there's a city in the world with a West African immigrant population that doesn't receive ape meat."
I don't think there's a city in the world with a West African immigrant population that doesn't receive ape meat
Richard Ruggiero
US Fish and Wildlife Service
Options to control the disease among apes include cutting or digging barriers to quarantine infected populations, moving apes away from where the epidemic is raging, or culling the reservoir species, if it can be identified.
An experimental vaccine has shown good results in monkeys2, and may be ready for human trials in a year or two, says Gary Nabel, director of the US National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. The vaccine might work for apes too, he says. "We'd very much like to use it to help."
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030331/030331-15.html
