Good News for Great Apes

Tune out the car alarms, the drone of your computer, the noise of traffic around you, and imagine for a moment that you are trekking through one of the last wild places on Earth, deep in the forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fill your ears with the trill of bird song and the rustle of animals moving through the canopy overhead, the trumpeting of elephants in the distance. But if you strain your ears, there are other sounds you might hear, too—the firing of hunting rifles and the felling of trees, the blasting of mines harvesting this war-torn African nation’s bounty of natural resources—gold, coltan, diamonds, uranium, and more.

In Africa’s vulnerable heartland, home to at least two, and possibly all four, of the world’s subspecies of gorillas, and containing more than 50 percent of the continent’s rain forest, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other organizations recently dedicated a new international pact to safeguard and boost populations of great apes, including gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans. The agreement, signed Friday, September 9, in the capital city, Kinshasa, set a target of 2010 for “securing a constant and significant reduction in the current rate of loss of great ape populations and their habitats; and, by 2015, securing the future of all species and subspecies of great apes in the wild.”

The ambitious plan sets out to control poaching and habitat loss by enacting stronger legal action in the 23 countries where great apes live. Acknowledging that the root cause of poaching and deforestation is poverty, the Kinshasa Declaration also calls upon the international community to provide key funding to these range countries, many of which are among the poorest in the world. The conference was organized by the United Nations Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP), set up in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

“This landmark agreement is the life insurance policy great apes so desperately need,” said Matthew Hatchwell of WCS, one of GRASP’s founding groups and one of two non-governmental organizations that sit on its executive committee. “We are extremely heartened that the international community has pledged support for great ape conservation so that this world treasure can be saved. GRASP now represents a broader coalition of people and organizations than have ever signed up to this type of agreement before.”

Caught in the Crossfire

In Wildlife Conservation magazine’s online edition, Terese Hart, now a WCS senior conservationist, and Robert Mwinyihali, manager of the WCS DR Congo program, write of the Ituri Forest’s survival after seven years of civil war in that country. To read about their efforts to protect this rich landscape, home to the elusive rain-forest giraffe, or okapi, as well as 13 species of primates, click here

To read about the WCS Gorilla Conservation Campaign, part of our efforts to save great apes throughout their range, click here

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