The Threat That Could Destroy the Home of the World’s Most Endangered ChimpTakepart.com
By Katharine Gammon | 2 hours ago
The Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee is the world’s most endangered chimp species—fewer than 6,000 individuals survive in the wild. Now a new study finds that climate change could so abruptly alter the primate’s environment that its habitat could disappear within decades.
The chimps form two small populations, split by a river. One lives in the mountainous rainforests of western Cameroon and the other on the savanna and in patchy forests of central Cameroon.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, used mapping tools and data on the chimps’ current location to model potential habitats in 2020, 2050, and 2080.
They found that while the rainforest chimps survived, the central Cameroon population disappeared almost entirely by 2080 in the worst-case scenario. Over the next five years, changes in rainfall and temperature could radically alter the mixed savanna-forest habitat by reducing tree cover.
“Our lab’s genetics work shows that these little groups of chimpanzees split off from each other only 4,000 years ago,” said Paul Sesink Clee, a doctoral student at Drexel University and lead author of the study. “Their genetics is so closely tied with the habitat.”
The researchers note that their models don’t take into account the potential for these chimpanzee populations to adapt to their changing habitats or migrate to new areas.
Climate change isn’t the only danger that chimps in Cameroon face. Logging, agriculture, and poachers also threaten their survival.
“When you see them in the wild, you can put your face on them and you’d be doing the same things,” Sesink Clee said of the chimps. “It’s bizarre to see how human they are.”
Climate change is most often seen creating vast changes in the Arctic and the Antarctic, but Sesink Clee noted that it’s important to also focus on the impacts at the equator. “If you look at the map, besides the poles, the major hot spot is in the tropics, including Central Africa,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/threat-could-destroy-home-world-most-endangered-chimp-202144956.html
