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people

Chimps Could Be Extinct
in the Next Few Decades

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BY VALERIE ORLEANS
From Dateline (October 14, 2004)

Q: What have you found out during your travels and study?
   
A:

Overall, we’ve seen a 40 to 50 percent decline in chimps over the past decade. It’s hard to come up with exact numbers because chimps tend to move deep into the forest where it’s not easy to find them. The research I’ve conducted runs parallel to studies performed by Jane Goodall. We’re both coming up with the same results: chimps are in grave danger.

   

   
Q: Based on this information, it looks like chimps could face extinction?
   
A:

They will if nothing changes. The bushmeat crisis – the hunting and eating of apes – has had the greatest impact on the decline of chimps. You find this not only in Africa but in parts of South America and Asia as well. And, of course, the loss of the rainforest, chimps’ natural habitat, due to logging, also creates significant problems.

   

   
Q: Why has this reached crisis levels?
   
A:

Well, you have many in Africa who are surviving on a subsistence level. Of course, they have done that for years. They go after the apes for the meat – the protein. But now villagers aren’t hunting simply to feed their families. There’s a profit motive. A virtual cottage industry has developed with villagers hunting apes so they can sell the meat to others. We believe that each year, two million metric tons of bushmeat is traded. Since there is little industry in West Africa, you can see why people live off the forest. However, it’s not sustainable and with guns, the kill rate is much higher. You are now threat-ening the entire species.

   

   
Q: What happens to the social structure of chimp groups when one is killed?
   
A:

Chimps tend to congregate in families and large groups. Hunters tend to focus on the females – particularly mothers. When you shoot the mother, you get the meat and you also get the babies that are then sold as pets. Also, when you shoot the females, the males come rushing in to protect them and they can be shot too. Some of the orphaned babies, of course, die or are found and taken to a chimp sanctuary.

   
   
Q: A chimp sanctuary? How many are there?
   
A:

Each year there are more because the problem is growing. I’m currently an adviser to the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance – a group of 19 sanctuaries – that conducts research and meets regularly. We believe that for every baby chimp that is cared for in a sanctuary, five to 10 are killed or die in the wild. It’s a mathematical guesstimate, but to give you an idea of the scope of the problem, in 2001, there were 400 chimps in sanctuaries; today there are 700. If that number keeps growing at the same rate, you can see it’s only a matter of time before chimps become extinct.

 

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Q&A with Rosen

• Norm Rosen

• What have you found out during your travels and study?

• Based on this information, it looks like chimps could face extinction?

• Why has this reached crisis levels?

• What happens to the social structure of chimp groups when one is killed?

A chimp sanctuary? How many are there?

• That's frightening?

• So what is the solution?


 
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