Ape alert

Perhaps the last major effort to save the world’s great apes from extinction has been launched at a recent meeting held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of 23 home states of the great apes. The meeting included an unusually broad range of interests for a conservation issue, with businesses, industry and communities joining up with scientists, environmental agencies and UN bodies to create the Kinshasa Declaration to support a strategy to conserve the animals. A key issue is that of reconciling the needs of local people with the needs of the great apes and to acknowledge that the alleviation of poverty in local communities through sustainable developments is likely to be one of the key factors in the strategy. The declaration came at the end of a conference of the United Nations Environment’s Great Ape Survival Project in the face of evidence that their population of at least two million 50 years ago has now fallen to no more than 400,000. Ape alert