The Great Apes Edge Toward Extinction
The finding was bad enough: During the last two decades, the population of wild chimpanzees and gorillas in the West African nations of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo has declined by more than half. But it was the context that made the news so discouraging. The dense forests in the two nations harbor an estimated 80 percent of the world’s remaining great apes, whose numbers have plunged elsewhere in Africa as human populations have expanded.
What’s more, scientists and conservationists have been active in the area for many years. “The fact that all of this could go on before our eyes and we didn’t see it happening is the really scary thing,” says Lee White, a Wildlife Conservation Society ecologist and coauthor of a study published in April that sounds a dire warning. Without aggressive intervention, wild chimps and gorillas could be pushed to the brink of extinction in just one decade.
Gabon and the Republic of the Congo were once thought to be safe havens for the great apes because the forest habitats in both countries remain largely intact. But a research team led by ecologist Peter Walsh of Princeton University discovered that conservation efforts are no match for two stealth threats: hunting and the Ebola virus.
Logging has been limited to selective thinning of forestland, but the roads built to accommodate mechanized equipment have provided organized groups of hunters with easier access to the apes and helped support a growing and illegal trade in “bush meat.” Meanwhile, Ebola outbreaks are decimating gorillas in the remote regions where their density is greatest. Researchers believe that sporadic Ebola outbreaks in Gabon have killed thousands of gorillas—perhaps as many as 9,000 between 1992 and 2000.
