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CNN Live At Daybreak

Apes' Numbers Falling

Aired June 19, 2001 - 07:57   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A call for help is going out across the globe this morning on behalf of human beings' closest living relative.

COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: The world's great apes are threatened with extinction, and CNN's Gary Strieker has the details for you.

We do warn you, though, that some of the picture in his report are graphic.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Rwanda's Volcano National Park, rebel soldiers have shot and killed two rare mountain gorillas. Only about 650 of these animals still exist in the wild, almost surrounded by a civil war that's endangering their survival.

This park official says there are so few gorillas left, losing even one of them is terrible. The threat to the mountain gorilla is only part of a growing catastrophe facing all the great apes in the forests of Africa and Asia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are really confronted with a disaster to great apes. They are simply under the threat of extinction.

STRIEKER: In central and west Africa, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees are threatened by new logging roads penetrating deep into forests that were once inaccessible. Following the roads, bush meat hunters are wiping out entire populations of the apes, driven by growing demand for meat in logging and mining camps and big cities.

In Indonesia, most surviving populations or orangutans face relentless destruction of their forest habitats by catastrophic fires and industrial logging. Conservationists say in the past 10 years, the number of orangutans in the wild has fallen by more than half, and probably fewer than 20,000 now survive.

Experts warn urgent measures are needed to save the great apes. That's the purpose of a new initiative by the United Nations environment program the Great Ape Survival Project. It will focus on efforts to preserve the habitats of the apes in Africa and Asia, starting with an appeal for $1 million to launch the rescue. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It must be open. It must be an offer to each and everybody to join us. And I can only underline this three times: Make it our common endeavor.

STRIEKER: The project will give assistance to anti-poaching efforts, conservation education, and ecotourism promotion, but critics say it's a very small effort coming too late in this crisis, and that far greater measures will be needed to stop the extinction of our closest animal relatives.

Gary Strieker, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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