U.N. Calls Emergency Meeting To Save Great Apes

U.N. Calls Emergency Meeting To Save Great Apes
Tuesday, November 4, 2003

The U.N. Environment Program and UNESCO have called 23 African and Southeast Asian countries to an emergency meeting in Paris at the end of this month to discuss new strategies to save the great apes from extinction, the Financial Times reports today.

The two-day meeting, to start on Nov. 26, will draw up a conservation plan to stop the decline in the population of gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees and will request funding from rich countries such as Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom for new projects.

Although there are still 94,500 western lowland gorillas around the world, three subspecies - the mountain gorilla, the cross-river gorilla and the Bwindi gorilla - now face "a very high risk of extinction in the wild in the immediate future," according to UNEP.

Exploitation of the great apes' habitats by men and bushmeat hunting are the main causes for the extinction of the animals, the Financial Times says.

"The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer (Jo Johnson, Financial Times, Nov. 4).