Great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos -- are being hunted to extinction for commercial bushmeat in the equatorial forests of west and central Africa. A ragged, far flung army of 2,000 bushmeat hunters supported by the timber industry infrastructure will illegally shoot and butcher over 3,000 gorillas and 4,000 chimpanzees this year. That's five times the number of gorillas on Rwanda's Mt. Visoke and 20 times more chimpanzees than live near Tanzania's Gombe Stream. People pay a premium to eat more great apes each year than are now kept in all the zoos and laboratories of the world.

Learn more about the bushmeat crisis from the following links:

The Bushmeat Crisis Task Force
The Ape Alliance's Bushmeat Working Group
Information on United Nations report on illicit trade of great apes
CNN report on endangered apes being poached for meat