NATURE:MANKIND'S CLOSEST relatives - the world's monkeys, apes and other primates - are disappearing from the face of the Earth, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In the first comprehensive review for five years of the world's 634 primate species, the IUCN found that almost 50 per cent are in danger of becoming extinct, based on the criteria used for its Red List of Threatened Species.
Issued yesterday at the International Primatological Society's 22nd congress in Edinburgh, the latest report by the world's foremost authorities on primates presented a chilling indictment on the state of these species everywhere.
Habitat destruction through the burning and clearing of tropical rain forests, which also emits at least 20 per cent of global greenhouse gases, is the major threat. Other threats include the hunting of primates for food and an illegal wildlife trade.
In Asia, more than 70 per cent of primates are classified on the IUCN Red List as either vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered - meaning they could disappear in the near future.
"What is happening in southeast Asia is terrifying," said Jean- Christophe Vié, deputy head of the IUCN species programme. In Vietnam and Cambodia, some 90 per cent of primate species are considered at risk of extinction.
Populations of gibbons, leaf monkeys, langurs and other species have dwindled due to rampant habitat loss exacerbated by hunting for food and supplying the wildlife trade in traditional Chinese medicine and pets.
Elsewhere, species from tiny mouse lemurs to huge mountain gorillas face challenges to survive. In Africa, 11 of the 13 kinds of red colobus monkeys assessed were listed as critically endangered or endangered, and two of those may already be extinct.
Bouvier's red colobus (Procolobus pennantii bouvieri) has not been seen in 25 years, and no living Miss Waldron's red colobus (Procolobus badius waldroni) has been seen by a primatologist since 1978, despite occasional reports that some still survive.
"We've raised concerns for years about primates being in peril, but now we have solid data to show the situation is far more severe than we imagined," said Russell A Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.
"Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact. In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction."
Researchers also considered reclassifying the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) to being merely endangered due to increasing populations in their only habitat - the protected mountain jungles of Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
However, the slayings of eight mountain gorillas in 2007 (for which a ranger in Congo's Virunga National Park was arrested last March) as well as continuing political turmoil in the region delayed the planned reclassification.
The review - funded by Conservation International, the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, Disney's Animal Kingdom and the IUCN - is part of a wider study of the world's mammals to be released at the IUCN's World Conservation Congress in Barcelona in October.