CONGO: In central Africa, a local charity is trying to stop the slaughter of apes by teaching people to treasure their primates - and to make money from them by not killing them. Declan Walsh reports from Mubi in the Congo
The baby chimp squirmed in the corner of a mud-walled house, deep inside Congo's eastern forests. Eyes wide with fear, he desperately gripped a red blanket. Banana skins littered the ground. Overhead stood the poachers who killed his mother.
"I brought him here because you white men pay money for them," said an aggressive man in a dirty T-shirt.
The asking price was $2,000, he said. With a little bargaining, we could probably have got him for $20.
To parade his merchandise, he tried to scoop up the terrified chimp. It screeched deafeningly and he dropped it on its head. Did the poacher know that chimpanzees were headed for extinction? "Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "Now how much are you going to pay?"
At the crisis meeting to save the world's great apes, which opened in Paris yesterday, experts told how mankind's closest living relatives have been pushed to the brink of extinction due to a combination of habitat destruction, poverty and unforgiving wars.
Great apes share more than 96 per cent of their DNA with humans; for chimpanzees the proportion is as high as 98 per cent. But every species - including gorillas, orang-utans, chimpanzees and bonobos - is heading for annihilation within 50 years, according to the World Conservation Union.
"If there is a doomsday clock ticking, then it's at one minute to midnight," said Mr Doug Cress of the Secretariat of Pan-African Sanctuaries.
The Paris meeting brings together scientists, activists and officials from 23 African and Asian countries to revive the Great Apes Survival Project (Grasp), a UN initiative set up two years ago but which has had little impact.
The enormity of the task is clear in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Congo. Kahuzi-Biega is home to the Grauer gorillas, a rare sub-species also known as silverbacks. The last time it was safe to count, in 1996, there was an estimated 8,000. Now there are probably less than 1,000, of which only 120 are accounted for.
War and poverty has decimated the population. During the Congo's five-year war, which is now winding down, warlords and their gunmen seized control of vast swathes of park to mine coltan, a precious minerals used to manufacture mobile phones and other electronics.
The miners cleared the forest, depriving the gorillas of their habitat. The soldiers shot them for food.
The hunt for bushmeat, particularly in a country where 17 million people need food aid, also fuelled the slaughter.
"The Bantu women came to the forest to collect firewood for charcoal. The pigmy people come for honey and mushrooms. And they set traps in areas where gorillas live."
A photo gallery of 50 silverback gorillas hangs on the wall of the park headquarters. "Every one of these is dead," said ranger John Karekwa.
Mazaruka, one of the oldest gorillas, is lucky to be alive. Years ago his right hand was chopped off in an antelope trap. Rejected by most of his group last spring, the lonely male now wanders the park with one female and three-year-old Chubaka.
During the war, the beleaguered rangers controlled only 15 per cent of the 6,000-acre park. With the return of some stability, the park is slowly opening up.
Now rangers say that poverty must be tackled to protect the remaining silverbacks. A local charity, the Pole Foundation, has started the work, employing dozens of ex-poachers as part of an ambitious re-education programme.
Pygmy trappers are being trained to chisel gorilla ornaments from wood instead of killing the real thing. Right now they are rushing to fill an order of 900 from the US. Sewing projects allow Bantu women to make money without entering the forest.
The race to save the great apes is on. If we lose even one single species of great ape, according to UNESCO, which is hosting the Paris meeting, "we destroy part of the bridge to our own origins and part of our humanity."