The Miss Waldron’s red colobus, a large West African monkey, has gone extinct, say scientists in the October issue of the journal Conservation Biology. This is the first time in several centuries that a member of the primate order, the taxonomic group to which humans belong, has gone extinct. The scientists warn that the pace of primate extinctions is about to pick up — in countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast, for example, logging and road-building have fragmented forests and created isolated pockets of animals that are being trapped and shot to supply a thriving market in bush meat. The scientists conclude, “The extinction of the Miss Waldron’s red colobus may be the first obvious manifestation of an extinction spasm that will soon affect other large animals in this region unless more rigorous protection is applied immediately.”
