COP 11, CITES, Nairobi, Kenya, April 10 – 20, 2000

Disappearing Planet of the Apes

A Taste For Extinction

The flesh of species such as chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, giant pangolins, and other wildlife (“bushmeat”) has historically provided a source of food for people throughout central and western Africa. Today, encroachment of logging companies and destruction of natural forest lands have led to the wholesale decimation of wildlife habitat as well as the escalation of the bushmeat trade. What was once a locally used food source has become an expensive delicacy in commercial trade — a trade that threatens the existence of the species involved. As Richard Leakey, former head of the Kenya Wildlife Service told CNN: “The slaughter of chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives, is absolutely diabolical. I can’t imagine that this can go on much longer before these animals are extinct.”

The number of great apes involved in this unsustainable trade is enormous. The Ape Alliance, an international coalition of over 30 organizations including the Born Free Foundation and the Jane Goodall Institute, estimates that in northern Congo “up to 600 lowland gorillas are killed each year to feed the trade” and that one-ton of smoked bushmeat is unloaded every day in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon.

Karl Ammann, one of the most vocal opponents of the bushmeat trade succinctly averred in a New York Times Magazine article that “the DNA of chimpanzees is 98.5 percent the same as that of humans... eating them [is] ‘98.5 percent cannibalism’.”

Timber corporations ripping through wooded areas of Africa have not only destroyed the forests on which wild animals depend, but have cleared logging roads which enable poachers to transport animals’ carcasses to markets in other regions, and sometimes to expensive restaurants in western Europe. Dr. Anthony Rose of The Biosynergy Institute estimates “that bushmeat trade across equatorial Africa is more than a billion dollar business” and that “as logging expands, the number of monkeys and apes killed for the cooking pot increases.”

Currently, killing apes for bushmeat provides a “quick buck” for humans. But when the apes are gone, the buck is too. In countries where the transnational timber corporations are wiping out forests, funds are lacking for enforcement of laws that prohibit killing and selling highly endangered species such as great apes. There is a moral obligation for these exploitative companies to completely cease facilitating the trade in bushmeat on their logging roads using their logging trucks.

Governments in need should receive funds to hire and train competent enforcement agents to fight the bushmeat trade. In some cases, poachers can become protectors and be paid to ensure that the resident wildlife is preserved. Greater availability of alternative food sources and other employment opportunities would be significant additional steps toward positive change.

CITES and The Great Ape Conservation Act

At the upcoming Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES this April in Kenya, a “Discussion Paper” will be offered by the United Kingdom on “Bushmeat as a Trade and Wildlife Management Issue.” The paper notes “that the loss of animals through the bushmeat trade is having a greater impact on conservation in some areas than habitat loss.” Action by all CITES Parties is essential to stem the decline of bushmeat species.

The U.S. is already well on the way to addressing the issue. United States Senator Jim Jeffords (R - VT) has engaged in a noble effort to elevate America’s role in ending this repugnant bushmeat trade. On May 10, 1999 he introduced in the United States Senate the “Great Ape Conservation Act,” S. 1007, to “perpetuate viable populations of great apes in the wild” and “assist in the conservation and protection of great apes by supporting conservation programs of countries in which great apes are located.”

The legislation would accomplish this by authorizing up to five million dollars to go into a “Great Ape Conservation Fund” each year from 2000 to 2004. Money in this fund could then be disbursed to enhance programs for conservation of great apes, including those to help minimize the conflict between humans and non-human primates over land resources and habitat protection, to monitor great ape populations and threats to those populations, and to enforce CITES restrictions on trade in parts and products of these species.

In Senator Jeffords’ words: “If we do not act now chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans may be extinct in the next 50 years.”