Apr. 19, 2000


Many Fellow Primates Face An Uncertain Future As Humanity's Forgotten Cousins

By Kurt Sternlof

Twenty percent of the world's known primates, such as the Toque Macque monkey of Sri Lanka (above), may face extinction during the next hundred years unless immediate action is taken to curtail habitat loss and hunting.

Despite having apparently survived the 20th Century without losing a single species to extinction, many of the world's primate populations--from the Red-ruffed lemur to the Mountain gorilla--may soon succumb to the success and whim of their dominant cousin, man.

Up to 20 percent of the world's known primate species face extinction over the next hundred years unless immediate action is taken to curtail hunting, capture for the pet trade and, most importantly, habitat loss from tropical deforestation, said Don Melnick, professor of biology and anthropology and executive director of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC).

That is why CERC has teamed with Conservation International and the Primate Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union on an endangered primates initiative. Together, the group convened a four-day conference and workshop in late February entitled "Primate Taxonomy for the New Millennium."

It turns out that saving a given species requires far more than simply establishing an arbitrary habitat preserve, or increasing its population in zoos, particularly once its numbers in the wild fall below the critical level necessary to maintain genetic vitality. Thus, conservation biologists such as Melnick and his CERC colleague Juan Carlos Morales now focus on what they call "significant evolutionary units" or "conservation units"--that is, populations of individuals whose fortunes are bound together in the fate of a common gene pool.

The still-new science of molecular genetics, responsible for the explosion of DNA evidence in criminal investigations, has also begun to revolutionize the field of taxonomy--the identification, grouping and classification of species. But while this exact new tool promises to help researchers accurately pinpoint critical conservation units and devise targeted strategies for their conservation, it also is complicating the picture by revealing the presence of many species previously undifferentiated by traditional taxonomy.

This revolution translates directly into a greater number of endangered species in need of immediate intervention, Melnick said. What was once considered a single threatened species might now be recognized as two or more distinct and smaller populations already depleted into the endangered range. And the ramifications for primates are particularly acute. The beleaguered orangutans of Asia provide a poignant illustration of this new taxonomic reality.

Among our closest primate relatives and until recently considered a single species, they are now recognized as two separate species, the Sumatran and the Bornean, with the latter consisting of several distinct subspecies. Thus this entire group of great apes is very likely in far worse shape than previously thought and might well move up the priority list for intervention.

"Of course it's better that we recognize this now, rather than later," Morales said. "Otherwise the Bornean orangutans might have been allowed to disappear under the mistaken assumption that, as long as the Sumatran population survived, no net loss of primate diversity had occurred."

Although the current initiative is focused on primates, the methods and insights developed will be directly applicable to the overall effort to preserve global biodiversity, strongly underscoring the need to conserve genetic diversity within all species, populations and conservation units.

"In the end result, the point is not to conserve species 'frozen' as they now exist, but rather their evolutionary potential to adapt to whatever environmental challenges they may face in the future," Melnick said. "Conserving a species' genetic diversity ensures that it will have the evolutionary flexibility necessary to adapt and survive over the long term."

CERC and its collaborators will present a complete analysis of the situation in their Primate Conservation Strategy and Action Plan for the 21st Century, to be released in January 2001 at the Congress of the International Primatological Society in Australia.