"We already knew that birds, freshwater fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals in general are declining in number and diversity," says author John Tuxill, a staff researcher at Worldwatch Institute, "a warning that the Earth's biological diversity, which supports our economic wealth, is in trouble. Perhaps by realizing that human activity now threatens creatures like ourselves such as chimpanzees and gorillas, we will finally take meaningful action."

Forest habitat loss to logging, mining, and encroaching human settlements is the biggest problem facing threatened primates. Hunting for food (one in three threatened primates is unsustainably hunted) and the largely illegal pet trade, which affects the "charismatic" species such as orangutans and gibbons, follow closely.

"The fate of forests will largely determine the fate of most primates", notes the author, "And more and more forests are losing their ecological integrity as they are logged, colonized, and cleared for agriculture."

In south and east Asia, decades of commercial logging, colonization, and other intensive human uses of forests have left 90 percent of primate species threatened or near-threatened with extinction. Orangutans, the great apes of Southeast Asia, have lost over 80 percent of their forests in just 20 years. In Madagascar, where all non-human primates are lemurs--the most ancient primate lineage alive today--some 80 percent of the island's old-growth forests have been lost since the arrival of humans about 1,000 years ago. That loss helped drive some 15 species to extinction before Europeans arrived, and of the 30 remaining, 20 are imperiled.

Even widespread primate species are declining as their habitat disappears. In Japan, the adaptable macaque monkeys -- which include the famous "snow monkeys" that frequent hot springs during winter -- have steadily lost their living space to urbanization, agricultural expansion, and the spread of timber plantations. Deprived of their natural food, many macaques must now raid orchards and fields to survive, earning the wrath of local farmers.

Of the roughly 50,000 macaques remaining in Japan about 5,000 are captured or killed each year in what some researchers call a "civil war" between monkeys and farmers.

Worldwide, one in three threatened primate species faces excessive hunting for food, with hunters often working closely with logging companies operating in the region. The ever-expanding network of logging roads gives hunters easy access to new, wildlife-rich territory, while income from bushmeat supplements loggers' incomes. The slightly more than a million people living in Gabon consume some 8 million pounds of bushmeat each year, with primates a large portion of the total. In neighboring Equatorial Guinea, primates are 25 percent of the bushmeat market.

Hunters tend to target the larger primates - in the Amazon, for instance, wooly and spider monkeys are the favored game -- and their loss can damage an ecosystem in many indirect ways. For instance, the moabi tree of central Africa relies upon lowland gorillas to disperse its seeds to good germination sites.

Few other animals have guts large enough to accommodate and pass moabi seeds intact. If gorillas disappear from an area, moabi trees are less likely to reproduce future generations successfully. Primates are also pursued for the pet trade. Although trade in wild primates is illegal in most countries, many have a weak record of enforcing wildlife laws.

As recently as 1995, wildlife markets in Indonesia blatantly offered dozens of live primates for sale. Unscrupulous entertainment businesses continue to demand charismatic primates such as orangutans and gibbons.

In the early 1990s, according to one recent report, "the capital of Taiwan, Taipei, was reputed to have more orangutans per square kilometer than the species' natural habitat." There are signs, however, that we can forge better relationships with our closest living relatives. The international demand for primates as biomedical research subjects swallowed up hundreds of thousands of wild primates during the 1950's and 1960's. Now, however, that trade (40,000 primates per year at present) draws almost entirely from captive-bred animals, a shift accomplished by host-country restrictions on wild-primate exports, and by effective implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, established in 1973. In many regions, people protect primates from harm by giving them sacred status or making them taboo to hunt or eat. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, some villages refuse to hunt pygmy chimpanzees, holding them to be too much like humans.

Throughout Asia, sacred forest groves provide sanctuary for resident troops of macaques and langurs. To protect primates over the long haul, far more habitat will have to be conserved or restored. One community in Belize, Bermudian Landing, protects native black howler monkeys in small areas of riverine forest donated by local farmers as a habitat reserve. The howlers feed mostly on tree leaves and do not disturb crops, and the community now gains economic benefits from tourists and schoolchildren who come to see the monkeys.

Community-oriented conservation is also keeping hopes alive for the famed mountain gorillas of the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of Congo. An international conservation program started in the 1980s emphasizes public education, gorilla-based ecotourism, and well-equipped park guard patrols, and helped mountain gorilla populations rebound from only 250 individuals to 320. Gorilla conservation was embraced by Rwandans so thoroughly that when civil war engulfed that country in the early 1990s, both sides emphasized they would not target the gorillas. Only two war-related gorilla deaths were recorded in Rwanda during that time period, both of them accidental.

Good examples of how to protect primates exist, but efforts will have to be scaled up drastically to turn the global trends around. This will include better managing protected areas that already shelter primates -- giving park personnel the training and funds they need to do their jobs, carefully integrating parks into local communities, and managing parks not as isolated units but as part of interconnected landscapes. It will also include expanding public education about primates, and increasing the economic benefits live primates can bring through carefully designed ecotourism programs.

Such activities, while ambitious, require relatively modest funding. Recommended conservation activities for all of Madagascar's lemurs have been estimated at little more than $1 million per year -- a small investment by international lending agency standards, especially considering the benefits gained by helping maintain the health of entire ecosystems. Finally, we all must recognize that if we are to give primates the space they need to live, we will have to use fewer resources ourselves, and rein in our own species' numbers. Only a close link between nature conservation and sustainable development will ensure healthy primate numbers into the future.

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