Chimps Decline 90 PercentIn A `Final Stronghold’ in West Africa

Numbers of chimpanzees in Ivory Coast, long one of the animal’s prime habitats in West Africa, have dropped from roughly 10,000 two decades ago to only 1,000 today, according to a new study. The study, carried out by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, says that a 50 percent growth of Ivory Coast’s human population since 1990, coupled with civil unrest, has led to massive deforestation and the collapse of chimp populations. One nature reserve, Marahoue National Park, has lost 93 percent of its forest cover since 2002, wiping out chimp populations through poaching for bush meat and habitat loss, the researchers said. The number of chimps remaining in Ivory Coast today — 800 to 1,200 — is a fraction of the estimated 100,000 that lived in the country in the 1960s. The study, published in the journal Conservation Biology, said that a coup attempt in 2002 and subsequent civil disorder have contributed to the atmosphere of lawlessness that has led to the precipitous decline of the chimps.