These findings are the result of a new paper published in the leading journal Science and represent the first assessment of how the targets made through the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have not been met.

Compiling over 30 indicators – measures of different aspects of biodiversity, including changes in species’ populations and risk of extinction, habitat extent and community composition – the study found no evidence for a significant reduction in the rate of decline of biodiversity, and that the pressures facing biodiversity continue to increase. The synthesis provides overwhelming evidence that the 2010 target has not been achieved.

“This study highlights how the pressures on biodiversity are continuing to build, resulting in rapid and widespread loss of wildlife at every level.

“Since 1970, we have reduced animal populations by 30%, the area of mangroves and sea grasses by 20% and the coverage of living corals by 40%”, said the United Nations Environment Programme’s Chief Scientist Prof Joseph Alcamo. “These losses are clearly unsustainable, since biodiversity makes a key contribution to human well-being and sustainable development, as recognised by the UN Millennium Development Goals.”

The study recognised that there have been some important local or national successes in tackling biodiversity loss, including the designation of many protected areas (e.g. the 20,000 km2 Juruena National Park in Brazil), the recovery of particular species (e.g. European Bison) and the prevention of some extinctions (e.g. Black Stilt of New Zealand).

But despite these encouraging achievements, efforts to address the loss of biodiversity need to be substantially strengthened, and sustained investment in coherent global biodiversity monitoring and indicators is essential to track and improve the effectiveness of these responses.

Dr Hantanirina Rasamimanana, a researcher and teacher at Antananarivo University, said:

“Deforestation is always a problem, but in these past five months bushmeat is also very dangerous. People are desperate because of the lack of rain.”

She added:

“Here in Madagascar, when there is a political change, everything is burning. It’s always like that. They burn, they cut, they destroy, they steal. “If they don’t stop, I am afraid that some species will become extinct.” Conservationists say that armed gangs are exploiting the security vacuum to pillage rosewood and ebony from supposedly protected forests on behalf of a so-called “timber mafia”.

Environmentalists warn that a political crisis in the impoverished country is reversing conservation gains of recent years and putting “hundreds if not thousands” of species, many not yet identified, at risk of extinction.

A brown lemur, one of the many species found in Madagascar. Photograph: Duncan Willetts/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Madagascar, which has been isolated from landmasses for more than 160m years, is the world’s fourth largest island and a “conservation hotspot” with thousands of exotic species found only here. These include nearly 100 species of lemur, six of which are deemed critically endangered.

Decades of logging, mining and slash-and-burn farming have destroyed 90% of Madagascar’s forests, though the rate has slowed in the past two decades.

The former president, Marc Ravalomanana, was praised for putting 6m hectares under protection and backing eco-friendly community projects and sustainable farming. But Ravalomanana was ousted in March in a violent coup that led to a breakdown of law and order and a “gold rush” of armed loggers and poachers. International sanctions have caused the suspension of environmental programmes and could hit 45 national parks that are 90% dependent on overseas aid.

Lemurs’ natural habitat is under threat from the accelerating deforestation. In addition, the endangered animals are being hunted for bushmeat, either to be eaten by drought-afflicted local populations or sold as a roasted delicacy in city restaurants.

You can read the complete article here

What characteristics make chimpanzees seem most like human beings?
Chip Clark, ST. JOHN’S, NFLD.

How can you be so empathetic with chimps?
Kantesh Guttal, PUNE, INDIA

How do you work with so many animals and not get overly attached to them?
Specialist McKinzie Baker CAMP TAJI, IRAQ

Which do you like better, chimps or humans?
Michael Boshears PALMER, ALASKA

What’s your position on people who have chimps as pets?
Siobhan Laurino, LYNN, MASS

I’m conflicted about the use of primates in research for human illnesses. What’s your opinion?
Idalia Roberts, ATLANTA

Why don’t you approve of zoos? Don’t they educate the public about the environment and endangered species?
Hari Venkatesh CHENNAI, INDIA

I would like to work with orangutans when I grow up. Any tips about how to get started?
Lauren Webb, LAYTON, UTAH

Do you feel that in your lifetime you will have achieved what is necessary for the permanent protection of chimpanzees?
Dan Quigley HOPKINTON, MASS.

Do you think there is still hope for this planet despite all the bad things we have done to our environment?
Elsie Wong, HONG KONG

Read Jane’s answers here.

Should great apes have rights?   This was one of the questions addressed last Sunday (26th July) on BBC1’s The Big Questions, which the BBC describe as their ‘flagship ethical and religious debate programme’.

Quoted from WildlifeDirect’s Gorilla Protection blog:

I was invited (Ian Redmond) to take part not because of my role as Ambassador for the UN Year of the Gorilla, but because I have spent hundreds of hours in the company of apes and have had the good fortune to regard some of them as friends (and an objective assessment of their behaviour suggests that the friendship was mutual).

I guess for any pedantic taxonomists reading this, I should specify ‘non-human apes as friends as well as human ones…’   Great apes share so many characteristics with humans that they are now classed in the same zoological family as us – the Hominidae (find out more in my new book The Primate Family Tree/Primates of the World via www.4apes.com/shop).   But paradoxically, in law they have the same legal standing as a piece of furniture;  in most countries without wild ape populations, captive apes can be bought and sold legally, and any protection they do have in law is accorded mainly because they are endangered species or because they are animals and covered by anti-cruelty laws.   Unfortunately these laws tend to take a rather physical view of cruelty as beating or starving an animal, rather than causing it suffering in other ways – so in law there is nothing to stop the owner of any non-human primate pulling an infant off a mother and selling one or both of them, even though it self-evidently causes great distress to both.

Continue reading this blog at WildlifeDirect