On the brink of extinction

This BBC article was saddening to the nth degree. Just the thought that we're letting our "cousins" slip into oblivion is mind-boggling.

"All of the great apes are listed as either endangered or critically endangered," co-author Lera Miles from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre near Cambridge told the BBC News website.

"Critically endangered means that their numbers have decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within three generations."

The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation is published by the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies and brings together data from many sources in an attempt to assess comprehensively the prospects for the remaining great apes: the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos of Africa, and the orangutans of south-east Asia.

A new assessment concludes that some of them great apes could be extinct in the wild within a human generation. Human settlement, logging, mining, and disease mean that orangutans in parts of Indonesia may lose half of their habitat within five years.

The World Atlas comes with a foreword by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which he argues forcibly for the preservation of apes.

"The great apes are our kin," he writes. "Like us, they are self-aware and have cultures, tools, politics, and medicines; they can learn to use sign language, and have conversations with people and with each other.

"Sadly, however, we have not treated them with the respect they deserve."

Very sad. Can you imagine a world without great apes?

Sad indeed.