Arthur Greene
Africa’s great apes face the near complete destruction of their natural habitats in the next 30 years, a large-scale study has warned.
“A perfect storm” of climate change, deforestation and human population growth will wipe out up to 94% of their habitats by 2050.
All of Africa’s chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos are already endangered or critically endangered. This prediction could leave them on the brink of extinction.
Scientists from over 50 universities published their findings in the journal of Diversity and Distributions.
They looked at two potential outcomes; neither one is good news for the continent’s apes.
In the first scenario, the scientists looked at the impact on apes’ habitats if the world fails to act on climate change. If this is the case, 94% of their natural habitat will be devastated.
Then they considered the impact on apes’ habitats if the world took drastic action against climate change in the next 30 years. In this scenario, they still stand to lose as much as 85% of their homelands.
“It’s a perfect storm for many of our closest genetic relatives,” Joana Carvalho, a UK biologist who led the study, told the Guardian.
“If we add climate change to the current causes of territory loss, the picture looks devastating.”
The study found that the climate crisis will make many lowlands, the current homeland of most of Africa’s apes, hotter, drier, and inhabitable.
As a result, plants and animals will be forced uphill. In places where the hills are too low, their populations will be wiped out.
There will be habitats that are suitable for great apes, but experts fear that they will migrate too slowly to reach them.
Carvalho said that humans must make an effort to help them by setting up more protected areas where they can live. Links must also be set up between these areas so primates can safely migrate between them.
However, the most important protection we can give to Africa’s great apes is for rich countries to lessen their demand for minerals for mobile phones, timber, and palm oil. These products have a devastating impact on the animals’ populations.
