Urgent Action Needed to Save Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Orangutans
Monday September 12, 2005
Last week, researchers, officials from the United Nations Great Ape Survival Project, and government ministers from countries throughout Africa and Asia met for fives days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Kinshasa to discuss ways to protect dwindling populations of great apes. One outcome of this meeting is that over 20 countries have joined in an international appeal for assistance in the immediate protection of endangered great apes in their countries.
Find out more:
- Intergovernmental Meeting on Great Apes and First GRASP Council Meeting (UNEP)
- Declaration signed on great apes (BBC News)
- Nations focus on great ape crisis (BBC News)
- Gorillas, chimps and orangutans face extinction
- Multi-million dollar grant aims to save gorillas
- Gorillas, chimps and orangutans face extinction
- Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla)
Comments
I’ve heard that Bonobos are in the most danger, didn’t they go from 40k down to 10k in a couple decades or something?
I seriously think humanity needs to get together and conquer the “democratic” Congo so we can stop all this poaching. It’s disgusting. The natives there must be a bunch of savages. To eat bonobos is the closest thing to widespread cannibalism we have in the world today.
Honestly, I think each bonobo alive today is more valuable than hundreds of human lives. Their genetic and cultural diversity can’t be lost to us. They teach us valuable things about who we are. There are plenty of humans. Any who could just kill each other are far less moral than bonobos. I don’t even think the savage warlike meat-eating chimps commit cannibalism.
The only way bonobos and chimps should be ever put at risk are in scientific research for medicine, and even then, with all precautions taken and recklessness discouraged, and even then, such research should only be undertaken when their numbers are significantly large to afford it. Right now they’re not.
We should institute mass breeding to try and get them up to at least a million I think. Maybe create a ‘gorilla city’ of sorts (yeah I know chimps/bonobos aren’t gorillas, I just like DC Comics).