Doha, 24
March 2010 - Gorillas may have largely disappeared
from large parts of the Greater Congo Basin
by the mid 2020s unless urgent action is
taken to safeguard habitats and counter
poaching, says the United Nations and INTERPOL
- the world's largest international police
organization.
Previous projections
by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP),
made in 2002, suggested that only 10 per
cent of the original ranges would remain
by 2030.
These estimates now
appear too optimistic given the intensification
of pressures including illegal logging,
mining, charcoal production and increased
demand for bushmeat, of which an increasing
proportion is ape meat.
Outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic
fever virus are adding to concerns. These
have killed thousands of great apes including
gorillas and by some estimates up to 90
per cent of animals infected will die.
The new report, launched
at a meeting of the Convention on the International
Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) taking
place in Qatar, says the situation is especially
critical in the eastern Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC) where a great deal of the
escalating damage is linked with militias
operating in the region.
The Rapid Response Assessment
report, entitled The Last Stand of the Gorilla
- Environmental Crime and Conflict in the
Congo Basin, says militias in the eastern
part of the DRC are behind much of the illegal
trade which may be worth several hundred
million dollars a year.
It says that smuggled
or illegally-harvested minerals such as
diamonds, gold and coltan along with timber
ends up crossing borders, passing through
middle men and companies before being shipped
onto countries in Asia, the European Union
and the Gulf.
The export of timber
and minerals is estimated to be two to ten
times the officially recorded level, and
is claimed to be handled by front companies
in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
Militias - A Key Link
The illegal trade is
in part due to the militias being in control
of border crossings which, along with demanding
road tax payments, may be generating between
$14 million and $50 million annually, which
in turn helps fund their activities.
Meanwhile, the insecurity
in the region has driven hundreds of thousands
of people into refugee camps. Logging and
mining camps, perhaps with links to militias,
are hiring poachers to supply refugees and
markets in towns across the region with
bushmeat.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP), said: "This
is a tragedy for the great apes and one
also for countless other species being impacted
by this intensifying and all too often illegal
trade."
"Ultimately it
is also a tragedy for the people living
in the communities and countries concerned.
These natural assets are their assets: ones
underpinning lives and livelihoods for millions
of people. In short it is environmental
crime and theft by the few and the powerful
at the expense of the poor and the vulnerable,"
he added.
Mr Steiner said he welcomed
the involvement of INTERPOL and called on
the international community to step up support
for the agency's Environmental Crime Programme.
He also underlined the
importance of strengthening treaties such
as the Lusaka Agreement on Co-operative
Enforcement Operations Directed at Illegal
Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora, which operates
in eight Eastern and Southern African countries
in support of CITES.
The new Rapid Response
Assessment report also recommends a greater
role for MONUC, the UN peacekeeping operation
in the DRC operating mainly North and South
Kivu.
Strengthening its mandate
in terms of support for park rangers and
control of border crossings, in collaboration
with national customs and international
bodies, could go a long way to reduce the
revenue-raising activities of militias and
their role in the illegal trade. This in
turn would bring a peace dividend for the
people of the region.
David Higgins, Manager
of the INTERPOL Environmental Crime Programme,
said: "The gorillas are yet another
victim of the contempt shown by organized
criminal gangs for national and international
laws aimed at defending wildlife. The law
enforcement response must be internationally
co-coordinated, strong and united, and INTERPOL
is uniquely placed to facilitate this."
"We are committed
to combating all forms of environmental
crime on a global scale. INTERPOL is mandated
to do so by providing law enforcement agencies
in all our 188 member countries with the
intelligence exchange, operational support,
and capacity building needed to combat this
world-spanning crime."
The report, issued during
the UN's International Year of Biodiversity,
is based on scientific data, new surveys
including satellite ones, interviews, investigations
and an analysis of evidence supplied to
the UN Security Council.
It has been compiled
by UNEP and partly updates its assessment
of 2002 entitled 'The Great Apes - The Road
Ahead'.
The 2002 report said
at the time that around 28 per cent, or
some 204,900 square kilometres of remaining
gorilla habitat in Africa, could be classed
as "relatively undisturbed".
"If infrastructure
growth continues at current levels, the
area left by 2030 is estimated to be 69,900
square kilometres or just 10 per cent. It
amounts to a 2.1 per cent, or 4,500 square
kilometre, annual loss of low-impacted gorilla
habitat across range states including Nigeria,
Gabon, Cameroon and Congo," the report
said at the time.
Christian Nellemann,
a senior officer at UNEP's Grid Arendal
centre who was lead author of the 2002 report
and who has headed up the new one, said
the original assessment had underestimated
the scale of the bushmeat trade, the rise
in logging and the impact of the Ebola virus
on great ape populations.
"With the current
and accelerated rate of poaching for bushmeat
and habitat loss, the gorillas of the Greater
Congo Basin may now disappear from most
of their present range within ten to fifteen
years," said Mr Nellemann.
"We are observing
a decline in wildlife across many parts
of the region, and also side-effects on
poaching outside the region and on poaching
for ivory and rhino horn, often involving
poachers and smugglers operating from the
Congo Basin, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda,
to buyers in Asia and beyond," he added.
Ian Redmond, Envoy for
the Great Ape Survival Partnership, established
by UNEP and the UN Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said
clamping down on ape meat in the bushmeat
trade would not harm local people.
"Ape meat is only
a tiny proportion of the million tonnes
of bushmeat consumed each year in the Congo
Basin, so removing it from the diet of consumers
would not greatly affect their protein intake
- but it would assist in halting the current
decline in gorilla populations being subjected
to hunting and who, given their complex
social structures, are so sensitive to the
killing of individuals," he added.
The report does, however,
contain some positive news. A new and as
yet unpublished survey in one area of the
eastern DRC, in the centre of the conflict
zone, has discovered 1000 critically endangered
Eastern lowland gorillas.
The other good news
is that the mountain gorillas in the Virungas,
an area which is shared by Rwanda, Uganda
and DR Congo, have survived during several
periods of instability. And this is the
result of transboundary collaboration among
the three countries, including better law
enforcement and benefit sharing with the
local communities.
This is also due to
the efforts of courageous park rangers who
last year, for example, destroyed over 1,000
kilns involved in charcoal production in
the Virunga National Park. But this has
come at a price - over 190 Virunga park
rangers have been killed in recent years
in the line of duty, with the perpetrators
thought to be militias concerned about a
loss of revenue.
Both UNEP and INTERPOL
say that significant resources and training
for law enforcement personnel and rangers
on the ground must be mobilized, including
long-term capacity building.
This includes funds
for supporting and investigating transnational
environmental crime in the region, including
the companies concerned in Africa and beyond,
all the way to the consumers.
The College of African
Wildlife Management at Mweka, near Kilimanjaro
(Tanzania) has worked with UNEP in developing
new programmes for anti-poaching as part
of the development of the report. The college
trains rangers across the entire eastern
Africa.
A UNEP report published
in 2007 and entitled The Last Stand of the
Orangutan underlined similar threats to
great apes in Asia. Since then, the Indonesian
government has successfully stepped up law
enforcement in many of its parks - and these
improvements could be mirrored in the Congo
Basin.
The report 'The Last
Stand of the Gorilla - Environmental Crime
and Conflict in the Congo Basin' was financed
by the Government of France and the Great
Ape Survival Partnership (GRASP) established
by UNEP and UNESCO.
Notes to Editors
The report 'The Last
Stand of the Gorilla - Environmental Crime
and Conflict in the Congo Basin' can be
accessed at www.unep.org or at http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/gorilla,
including high and low resolution graphics
for free use in publications.
The report will be released
at 8:30 am GMT on 24 March at the 15th Conference
of Parties of the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES) in Doha (Qatar).
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For more information on the Great Ape Survival
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For more information, please contact
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Media