Threats to Apes

Deforestation and fragmentation is the greatest driver of habitat loss for great apes across Equatorial Africa and Indo-Malaysia. Great apes have lost over 50% of their original habitat since 1900. 

Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.

Climate chaos may appear to have little to do with great ape survival in the wild, but when we look at all the factors pressuring apes it becomes clear that just as understanding the global climate requires considering a range of factors — desertification, carbon sequestration, greenhouse gases, deforestation, etc.

Wildlife trafficking, poaching, bushmeat, illegal wildlife trade — all mean one thing to great apes — death. Ultimately that spells extinction. 

Palm oil has changed the world like few other plant products in the history of humankind. That change has impacted negatively great apes more than almost any group of creatures.