apes

In a bid to mobilize global support for an 11th-hour effort to save humankind's closest living relatives from extinction, the United Nations environmental agency today launched the most comprehensive compendium of information about great apes ever compiled.

Humankind’s closest living relatives, the great apes, are on the brink of extinction and $25 million is urgently needed to lift the threat, a United Nations sponsored crisis meeting was told today.

If the construction of roads, mining camps and other infrastructure continues at current levels for the next 30 years, the great apes of Africa will have less than 10 per cent of their remaining habitat "relatively undisturbed," according to a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released today.