JOHANNESBURG - Humanity’s closest relative, the chimpanzee, could be extinct in around 50 years because it is hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and disease, researchers said on Tuesday.

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Only 8,000 remain of the most vulnerable chimpanzee subspecies, the Pan troglodytes vellerosus, which is found predominantly in Nigeria, and it could be extinct in two decades, according to a new study.

The study was presented at a conference of The Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance in Johannesburg. PASA sanctuaries care for orphaned or injured great apes.

“It is believed that the illegal hunting and eating of apes -- known as the bushmeat crisis -- has had the greatest impact on the rate of decline, along with deforestation, human encroachment and disease,” PASA said in a statement.

'More critical than we thought'
“The situation is much more critical than we thought,” said Norm Rosen, an anthropologist at California State University-Fullerton who coordinated the study.

The study used the rate of orphans brought by people to sanctuaries to calculate the loss of chimpanzees in the wild -- and showed a dramatic increase in the number of baby chimps losing their parents.

Rosen’s study estimates that 10 chimpanzees in the wild are killed for every orphan that reaches a sanctuary and predicts that the vellerosus subspecies will become extinct in the next 17-23 years.

The other three chimpanzee subspecies face slightly better odds but, at current estimated rates of decline, all are expected to disappear in 41-53 years.

“The numbers at the sanctuaries don’t lie. You don’t get the kind of steady stream of orphaned chimpanzees we’re seeing without a devastating drop in the wild population,” said Rosen.

50 percent more orphaned chimps
Chimpanzees are found in western, central and eastern Africa.

The 19 PASA sanctuaries currently care for approximately 670 chimpanzees, a number that has risen by more than 50 percent in the last three years.

The study is the latest to sound the alarm about the fate of the great apes, which consist of chimps, gorillas, bonobos and the orangutans of Asia.

One recent UN study said less than 10 percent of the forest home of Africa’s great apes will be left relatively undisturbed by 2030 if road building, construction of mining camps and other infrastructure developments continue at current levels.

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