Deforestation is making remote jungle areas more accessible to poachers [Reuters]

Habitat destruction, led by burning and clearing of tropical forests for farmland, and the hunting of monkeys and apes for meat were the main threats, according to the report released on Tuesday.

Scientists meeting at the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland hope that the report will help spur action to save mankind's nearest relatives, such as chimpanzees, orang-utans, gibbons and lemurs.

Some species are "literally being eaten into extinction", a statement from the the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintain the "red list" of endangered species said.

Habitats threatened

Primates in Asia are suffering the greatest threat, according to the report, with 71 per cent of species at risk. Rapidly increasingly human populations are fragmenting habitats for orang-utans, gibbons and leaf monkeys.

"What is happening in Southeast Asia is terrifying," Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy chief of the IUCN species programme, said.

"To have a group of animals under such a high level of threat is, quite frankly, unlike anything we have recorded among any other group of species to date."

In Africa 37 per cent of species are at risk and the mountain gorilla, found in the jungles of Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo, stayed on the critically endangered list despite a rise in numbers.

"Gorilla meat, chimpanzee meat and meat of other apes fetches a higher price than beef, chicken or fish" in some African countries, Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and head of the IUCN primate specialist group, said.

He also said  deforestation was helping the poachers by opening up previously inaccessible regions.

Among primate species most at risk, or "critically endangered", are the Bouvier's red colobus, an African monkey which has not been seen in 25 years, and the greater bamboo lemur of Madagascar, of which there are believed to be only about 140 in the wild.

"If you took all the individuals of the top 25 most endangered species and assigned each of them a seat ... they probably wouldn't fill a football stadium," Mittermeier said.

Gorilla discovery

However, there was a rare piece of good news from the conference as a census by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society and the Republic of Congo discovered to new populations of western lowland gorillas in two northern areas of the country.

Two new populations of the western lowland gorilla were found [Reuters]

Estimates taken in the 1980s had put the number of western lowland gorillas at less than 100,000 and the population was believed to have fallen by half since then. The newly discovered animals take the number up to between 175,000 and 225,000.

"This is a very significant discovery because of the terrible decline in population of these magnificent creatures to Ebola and bush meat," Emma Stokes, one of the research team, said.

The researchers worked out the population figures by identifying and counting the sleeping "nests" gorillas make. The creatures are too reclusive and shy to count individually.

Mittermeier said that he would like to see more than $100 million a year going to help conserve primates in five years time, up from less than $10 million now.

"It is not too late for our close cousins the primates, and what we have now is a challenge to turn this around," he said.

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