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Chief Threat to World's Endangered Species No Longer Habitat Destruction; 'Hunting, Especially in Central and West Africa, is Much More Serious Than We Imagined,' Says Conservationist. 'It's Huge.'

Gorillas in Congo National Park Have Become Targets of Powerful Interests; Some See Deaths as Messages to Rangers Speaking Out Against Industry

NEW YORK, July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- For decades, the chief threat to the world's wildlife was habitat destruction. Even poachers and subsistence hunters were not a primary danger. That has now changed, reports Senior Editor Sharon Begley in the current issue of Newsweek. Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, tells Newsweek, "Hunting, especially in central and West Africa, is much more serious than we imagined. It's huge," with the result that hunting now constitutes the pre-eminent threat to some species.

(Photo:

http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070729/NYSU004 )

Last week, four mountain gorillas were killed in the jungles of Congo's Virunga National Park, the latest in a series of killings of the critically endangered primates since January. In the August 6 Newsweek cover, "Slaughter in the Jungle" (on newsstands Monday, July 30), Africa Bureau Chief Scott Johnson reports from the scene of the gorilla killings in Congo while Begley examines the bigger issue that the world's endangered species are facing extinction because of hunting.

The threat posed by hunting has been escalating over the past decade largely because the opening of forests to logging and mining means that roads connect once impenetrable places to towns, Begley reports. "It's easier to get to where the wildlife is and to have access to markets," says conservation biologist Elizabeth Bennett of Wildlife Conservation Society. Economic forces are also at play. Thanks to globalization, meat, fur, skins and other animal parts "are sold on an increasingly massive scale across the world," she says. Smoked monkey carcasses travel from Ghana to New York and London, while gourmets in Hanoi and Guangzhou feast on turtles and pangolins (scaly anteaters) from Indonesia. There is a thriving market for bushmeat among immigrants in Paris, New York, Montreal, Chicago and other points in the African diaspora, with an estimated 13,000 pounds of bushmeat -- much of it primates -- arriving every month in seven European and North American cities alone. "Hunting and trade have already resulted in widespread local extinctions in Asia and West Africa," says Bennett. "The world's wild places are falling silent."

Johnson reports from Africa that even after years of civil war, the park rangers who found the gorillas were shaken by the slaughter. One of the female gorillas that was killed was pregnant and had singed fur. "My God," one ranger said in disgust, "They even burned her." The massacre, first discovered on July 23, could be the worst slaughter of mountain gorillas in the last quarter century.

Elections held a year ago were supposed to have quelled the demons that had fueled what many called Africa's "world war" -- a vicious battle for power and resources between militias and even armies from neighboring countries. But according to local human-rights workers and renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey, among others, a corrupt mafia of charcoal merchants has recently begun harvesting Virunga's forests to fuel a $30-million-a-year industry. "These are their oil wells," Leakey says of Virunga's trees. If unchecked, the loggers' activities could decimate the gorilla habitat in a few years.

As Johnson reports, the mountain gorillas, part of a worldwide population that numbers around 700, have become more-direct targets as well. Seven have been killed, some would say murdered, since January. They have not been killed for their meat or their pelts or their internal organs. In fact, no one is quite sure why they've been killed. In January two of them died amid fighting between a renegade Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, and government forces. But others, like the family found last week, have been shot at close range and in some cases mutilated.

One of the park rangers, Paulin Ngobobo, 43, has been intimately involved in trying to stop the charcoal trade from spreading across Virunga. A devout Christian, with a wry sense of humor, Ngobobo is fiercely protective of the gorillas in his sector of the park. Six months ago he was lecturing villagers about the threat the charcoal industry posed to Virunga when men in military uniforms showed up, stripped him of his shirt and flogged him in front of the audience. Last month he posted a blog item in which he accused the charcoal merchants of being complicit in the destruction of the gorillas' habitat. Two days later unknown gunmen killed a female gorilla under his care, Johnson reports.

Ngobobo says he has received death threats and warnings to stop criticizing the charcoal industry. Then came last week's killings, which many in his unit have interpreted as political assassinations -- a message from the powerful interests who operate in the area. "There are people who are feeding off this conflict," Ngobobo warns darkly. Last week authorities arrested Ngobobo and accused him of negligence because the recent killings all happened on his watch; his supporters claim that that was part of the assassins' plan all along. Ngobobo denies any wrongdoing.

Leakey's partner, Emmanuel de Merode, says that as recently as 2001 "there wasn't a single vehicle in the whole sector; none of the rangers had uniforms or rifles." Since 1994, about 120 rangers have been killed in the line of duty. "It's almost impossible to be sanguine about the gorillas' future," says Leakey. "They are hugely vulnerable in part because they're living in areas that are hugely unsettled ... The security of this species is not guaranteed."

(Read cover story at www.Newsweek.com.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20012317/site/newsweek/

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Source: Newsweek

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