Our local news station, NY1, has regular "The World Outside New York," segments. Well, every now and then, with your permission, I will post issues having to do with the world outside NY. This particular one deals with an issue that I consider particularly critical: the impending extinction of our closest relatives, the Great Apes. No the fate of the Great Apes is not something that will win us an election or save our jobs or get us out of Iraq. But there are moral and practical reasons for being concerned about our closest cousins. The reason I am highlighting this issue right now is that two species of Great Apes are literally on the verge of extinction (see below). So timing is CRITICAL. Two species of our closest relatives could be extinct within 5-10 years.

As a molecular biologist, I am very familiar with the field of genetics. It is in this context that I first became interested in the plight of the Great Apes when I learned that humans differ from Chimps and Bonobos by only 1.6% of our DNA. That means we are more than 98% identical to these animals in our DNA. This is an extraordinary similarity and it means that in an evolutionary sense, Chimps and Bonobos are in a very real sense our brothers. When I learned this I felt as if some of our distant ancestors such as the Neanderthals still lived with us today. Gorillas are like us in more than 97% of our DNA, making them, if not our brothers, at least our cousins.

What does this mean? To me this means that we have a duty to protect the Great Apes since they are so closely related to us. If we kill them off, then we cannot go back. They are the last of our evolutionary relatives and to lose them is to lose our past. I do not mean this just metaphorically, although that is also a powerful argument. I mean it scientifically as well. To a scientist, studying the Great Apes gives us a chance to study what early forms of humans were like. How did we evolve? What were early human societies like? Why was our own branch of evolution so successful while the Neanderthals and Autralopithecines were not? All these questions can be answered today only through the study of the Great Apes.

There is also a very practical reason to try and protect the wild populations of Great Apes. AIDS research has been helped by the discovery of the wild ape and monkey populations that seem to be the origins of the two forms of HIV. Scientists have been able to pinpoint the closest relatives of HIV1 and HIV2 in specific wild primate populations. Studying these wild populations allows us to study how these primates have evolved to deal with the disease, which isn’t fatal in these primates. It can also teach us how the virus evolved to jump species into humans. If we lose these wild primate populations, we lose a valuable tool in our search for ways to deal with AIDS.

Of course there are many other reasons to save the Great Apes. How can we morally accept their demise? Don’t we lose something emotionally and morally if we allow them to be killed off? Of course we do. But I also wanted to emphasize the practical, scientific considerations above. Personally, I have been working to save the Great Apes for about 4 years now. It is one of my many little projects, though it has been one where I have had only limited success since I don’t have as many connections to work with on this issue than I do in my political efforts and in my efforts to save a Latvian synagogue, which has met with much greater success. So now I am making another effort to get the word out and I am asking for your help.

Why now? The answer is that two of the four African Great Ape species, the Bonobo (pygmy Chimpanzee) and the Mountain Gorilla, are right now on the verge of extinction. The Common Chimp and the Lowland Gorilla are also endangered, but to my knowledge, their plight isn’t as critical right now. The situation for the Mountain Gorilla and the Bonobo are different, but both critical.

I will start with the Bonobo since it was an article about the Bonobo crisis that first inspired some of what I write in this diary some months ago.

One brief excerpt:

"The world could soon lose the primate species that shares the greatest genetic connection to humans. Bonobos are fascinating creatures that are little understood," said Richard Carroll, a primatologist who directs the fund's Central Africa program. "If humans allow our closest relatives to go extinct, we have failed as a species."

The main problem with saving the Bonobo is that, unlike the Common Chimp and the Mountain Gorilla, there are no big, well funded efforts to save them. Little of their territory is protected and no big names, like Dian Fossey or Jane Goodall, have ever worked to save them. So although they still have a larger population than the critically endangered (read that as almost extinct!) Mountain Gorilla, little is being done to protect them, so their population is declining far faster than anyone previously imagined. The Bonobo is one of the more fascinating Ape species. Many anthropologists think that the Bonobo, unlike the Common Chimp, does not use aggression to establish a dominance hierarchy but rather uses sex. Males and females will trade sex for food, for grooming, etc. Disputes often are handled through sex. Bonobos frequently have sex with pretty much all other Bonobos, and are thus bisexual. They are a clear example of how sex isn’t JUST about reproduction, but is also about social interaction.

The Mountain Gorilla DOES have a big-name fund working for them: the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. And this group has been working hard. However, the wars in Rwanda and Congo and civil conflicts in Uganda have limited their efforts. Furthermore, Ebola, one of the diseases that has hit the human African population so hard in recent years, has also hit the Gorillas. When I first became aware of the plight of the Mountain Gorilla there were about 700 known individuals in the wild. Understand, that this is a VERY small population. Over the few years following the start of my interest, that number dropped to under 400! That is a catastrophic drop in only a few years! And it also means that the population of Gorillas was getting near to a level that can no longer genetically sustain itself. Hunting and Ebola are definitely the main causes of the drop, though it should be kept in mind that in some cases population counts are hindered by war and rough terrain, meaning that the drop may partly be due to sampling errors. But the drop was also visible among the populations that were well monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. It was about this point that I started to work to raise awareness and funds for the Great Apes since it was clear to me that it was quite possible that the Mountain Gorilla would be extinct in 5 years. Again, my efforts haven’t yielded much. All I was able to do was link up two foundations with two agencies helping apes and spark up a mutual interest and dialogue. I don’t know whether any grants were awarded.

However, the efforts of groups like the Dian Fossey Fund have been somewhat effective. Since that catastrophic drop, increased anti-poaching efforts and lulls in some of the wars have allowed an apparent 17% population increase over the last few years. So there is hope. Still, the Mountain Gorilla population is critically low and the problems they face remain.

Like all the Great Apes in Africa, three main things threaten the Bonobo and Mountain Gorilla: hunting (for Bushmeat and for “trophies

Bookmark/Search this post with:

| | | | | | | |