Machine-gun-toting commercial poachers in Africa are killing apes and monkeys at such high rates that some scientists fear a number of primate species could be exterminated from central Africa’s jungles within 10 years. Biologists from several enviro groups, including Conservation International, estimate that African poachers kill some 1 million metric tons of game every year. The chimpanzee population has dropped an estimated 95 percent in the last century. Conservationists at the Bush Meat Project in Los Angeles are trying to address the problem by paying hunters to put down their weapons. The group has plans to establish an ecotourism preserve to be protected by former hunters, hoping to show that living primates are worth more money than dead ones.
