VANCOUVER SUN
Latest News

Pacifist chimps from Congo threatened with extinction

Mike Pflanz
Daily Telegraph

Thursday, September 08, 2005

NAIROBI -- Pygmy chimpanzees known as "jungle hippies" for resolving conflict through sex rather than fighting are hurtling towards extinction faster than any other primate, experts said Wednesday.

Bonobos are gentle creatures found only in the remote war-torn forests of Congo, that live in strictly matriarchal families and neither kill nor fight over territory.

They also pair off for sex at the slightest hint of danger, stress or friction, earning them their hippy nicknames for "making love not war."

They are among man's closest relatives and face the prospect of being the first great ape to be wiped from the planet.

Claudine Andre, a conservationist, said: "All the great apes left in the wild face extinction, but it is the bonobos who look likely to be the first ones to go."

Andre, who runs an orphanage for the primates in Congo's capital Kinshasa, said: "Their habitat was right on the front line in the civil war, they have always been poached for bushmeat and, now that there is peace, you have loggers and mining companies starting operations again."

In 1980 there were an estimated 100,000 bonobos but 10 years later that had dropped to 10,000.

Since then Congo has been too dangerous for conservationists to research the species' numbers. Added to the destruction of their habitats from mining and logging, Congo's vast and inaccessible hinterland is still awash with gunmen. They are falteringly being integrated into the nation's army, but as that process stalls, they are armed and hungry and patrolling bonobo territory.

Andre said: "These are animals which search for peace whenever they sense danger, usually through approaching another and having sexual intercourse.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005