In the marketplaces of Central Africa it's a common sight to see the body parts of gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees hanging on hooks to be sold as food.
But US environmentalists and biologists are now warning that the growing appetite for "bushmeat" is not only threatening Africa's great apes with extinction but also posing a growing AIDS risk to humans.
As logging companies forge roads into areas previously inaccessible to humans, apes are forced out of their habitats and then pursued by growing numbers of hunters and butchers who turn man's closest relatives into dinner.
The result is a sudden explosion in scope and impact of the traditional consumption of wild animal meat from a means of subsistence to an enormous and unsustainable business with global health implications, said Los Angeles-based biologist Dale Peterson.
"It's a US$361 million business and the supply is collapsing based on sophisticated hunting techniques," said Peterson, the author of a book on the subject called Eating Apes.
Comparing the business to the US$1 billion-a-year logging business which is expanding, he said that while the dwindling ape population remains a major concern to environmentalists, there were human health risks too.
The butchering process of the apes is at the heart of the potential health crisis.
"We're eating our closest relatives," said Michael Dee, general curator at the Los Angeles Zoo. "If a person has a wound or gets blood in his mouth, then the disease would be transmitted."
About 1 percent of HIV-2 (human immuno-deficiency virus number 2) cases, the type that affects West Africa, is transmitted during the butchering process of monkeys, he said.
Since diseases find ways to mutate or cross over to different species -- including HIV and SARS, which is thought to have originated in Civet cats -- the rise of a third strain of HIV is becoming increasingly likely as the bushmeat phenomenon grows, Dee said.
The contraction in population of the creatures has long been a worry for conservationists, but the problem is now reaching epidemic proportions.
Only about 120,000 gorillas -- enough to fill just one large football stadium -- remain in the world, as well as 250,000 chimpanzees and 50,000 bonobos.
By comparison, the number of humans is increasing at the rate of two stadiums a day and expanding into new areas.
"We owe it to them to save them," Peterson said.
But while orphanages have sprung up to care for apes that have lost their parents to hunters' bullets, conservationists are having trouble making their warnings about the surge in appetite for bushmeat heard because the subject matter was "too disturbing" for audiences.
"Not a lot of people want to buy a book of a gorilla's head in a pan or a hand being butchered," Peterson said.
Peterson and a coalition of defenders of Africa's besieged great apes are trying to rally public awareness and financial support for a drive to clamp down on the eating of apes.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight on several Russian power and energy facilities forced capacity reduction at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and set a fuel export terminal in Ust-Luga on fire, Russian officials said yesterday. A drone attack on the Kursk nuclear plant, not far from the border with Ukraine, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to 50 percent reduction in the operating capacity at unit three of the plant, the plant’s press service said. There were no injuries and a fire sparked by the attack was promptly extinguished, the plant said. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding
RSS