Ivory Coast Chimp Population Down 90% In Less Than 20 Years - Mongabay

[hatrack]

Chimp populations continue to decline in Africa. A new survey of our closest relatives in the Cote D’Ivoire found that the population fell from an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals to a paltry 800 to 1,200, a decline that took place in less than twenty years.

Perhaps most troubling about this new survey is Cote d’Ivoire was supposed to be a stronghold for chimpanzees in West Africa. The report warnsit is likely that similar declines have occurred in other West African nations.

Researchers point to an increase of humans in Cote d’Ivoire as the primary reason. Since 1990 the nation has seen its human population grow by 50 percent. This has lead to increases in poaching and deforestation, activities which target both chimps and their habitat.

"The habitat is gone, and all the protected areas have been invaded by people. It's not just the chimps— no animals at all," lead author Genevieve Campbell told National Geographic.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0506-hance_chimpcotedivoire.html

[GliderGuider]

1. That 90% figure seems to be cropping up a lot.

90% of the world's big fish are gone.
90% of the world's forests are gone.
90% of the world's large wild mammals (lions, tigers, elephants, bison etc.) are gone.

It's a crying shame. :cry:

[navarth]

2. My guess would be

too many humans.

[mimitabby]

4. yes too many humans

and how many big charities are over there in these poor places feeding children who will then grow up with nothing to eat?
to us, it's horrible to see children starving to death, but it's even worse to feed them so they can grow up and have
more children who will starve to death AND insure the extinction of most of the mammals in Africa and Asia
They comb the jungles for any life and eat anything they can find.

[HamdenRice]

7. Ignorance about Africa is widespread. Ivory Coast EXPORTS food that you eat

assuming you eat chocolate. It is the largest producer of cocoa in the world.

How many times does this have to be said: The vast majority of food eaten by Africans is grown by Africans.

They are not being fed by western charities.

You are confusing persistent food deficit areas (mostly in recurrent drought areas of the sahel), war torn areas or areas of urban poverty that the teevee loves to show with the whole continent, and with relatively affluent countries like Ivory Coast.

They are not "combing the jungle for any life and eat anything they can find." In fact, IC cocoa farmers practice agro-forestry, which tends to preserve rain forest habitat. That's because the cocoa tree is an "understory" tree that has to grow under the larger rain forest trees. You can't be the biggest grower and exporter of chocolate without PRESERVING the "jungle" (actually the "rainforest"). Other crops are grown using regular tropical farming methods. Ivory Coast EXPORTS fruit to feed Europeans.

Except during a brief bad civil war, IC has generally been food self sufficient, and exports a vast amount of cocoa (as well as minerals) with which it purchases any food deficits.

The chimps are being killed by hunters who cater to the urban market for "exotic" meats -- ironically, it is relatively affluent Ivorians, not hungry ones, who are destroying the chimp and monkey populations with their demand for exotic "bush meat".

There may be hungry people in IC, but that would be a result of poverty and inequality, not the inability of the country to feed itself.

[GliderGuider]

8. Overall Africa imports about 28% of its total caloric requirements

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Africa imports about 28% of its calorie requirements. The major imports are wheat (58% of requirements), rice (41% of requirements) and oils (54% of requirements).

This means that they produce 72% of their own food, indeed the vast majority. The future looks less rosy due to climate change and rising fertilizer costs, but the African picture isn't just stick limbs and swollen bellies.

[HamdenRice]

10. Sadly, a lot of that has to do with inappropriate foods. Here's a funny story.

But first, I think the picture has to be disaggregated. The OP is about Ivory Coast. I would guess that if you netted imported calories against exported calories, it is a net exporter.

Africa also includes North Africa (very big net calorie importers) as well as places that are at war (Congo, biggest country in the continent).

So if we look at sub-Saharan Africa capacity during peacetime, my guestimate is that the net imported calories are lower. Certainly the Chinese are betting they will be net exporters in the near future.

Then you have to look at what is being imported -- and as you point out, it's wheat, rice and oil.

Wheat grows well almost nowhere in Africa (except the Western Cape and some Kenyan highlands) and is used to make bread, which is a remnant of imported European diet preferences.

Rice grows well in Africa, but it is mostly "upland" or "dryland" rice, and rarely bleached and polished. Most rice imported to Africa is wetland or paddy rice from America. So again because of preferences introduced by colonialism and advertising, people eat imported white rice even in regions that grow surpluses of native brown rice, and these countries basically let family farmers grow brown rice, which city dwellers won't buy, and go to rot.

So I'm not sure whether the import figure represents what they are capable of, or what they have been convinced to do.

Anyway, here's the story. The first time I lived in Africa was 1981, and I went to live in a Liberian village that had lots of very skilled upland rice farmers. One day, I interviewed a farmer who everyone in the village said was their most skilled rice grower. Knowing I was a Black American, he launched into a tirade about how our peoples are supposed to be brothers, and yet "that Black American" was destroying all the farmers by selling cheap white rice in the city, so that no one would buy his "country rice" anymore. He went on and on about this Black American who was destroying the market for country rice in Greenville and Monrovia.

So I finally asked him who this Black American was who was destroying his market.

He yelled, "Uncle Ben!"

There was a very influential research essay by Olga Linares de Sapir from the 70s iirc, about this. She wrote about studying the rice farmers of Senegal, and how they stored up year after year of lowland brown country rice in their storehouses until it rotted, while city dwellers would only buy and eat imported white rice.

On edit: Thanks for the link; I'll check it out.

[pscot]

3. Now I'm taking that

very personally.

[formercia]

5. They all died of embarrassment

for being associated with George W Bush, our Fearless Leader.

[nichomachus]

6. The White House chimp population is down 100 percent

and that's a good thing.

[cpompilo]

9. We humans have a breeding problem.

Until we get a handle on reproduction, we will continue to read stories like this. Can you imagine if the population, around where you live, doubled in size? Our over population is putting too much stress on the earth's resources as we parasitize the planet.

I find it particularly sad to watch the ongoing documentation of disappearing species throughout our lifetime.