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["Andrew Hund" <axh69 AT cwru.edu>]

Title: War leaves chimps open to slaughter in last refuge

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=176041

Atibu Filibungan wobbled over the jungle track with another consignment on the back of his bicycle: a baby chimpanzee.

A few months old, she peered through the bars of the home-made cage, the 15th chimp to be transported by Filibungan, better known to locals as Mr Delivery.

Chimpanzees are an endangered species and the trade is illegal but Filibungan was not worried.

"She is a pet for the general. He has decided to give himself a present."

Across swaths of the Democratic Republic of Congo warlords make up their own laws and here, in this part of Maniema province, that means the word of General Lwidi Windi.

Conservationists have warned that the DRC's great apes, including its chimpanzees, face extinction because of logging and hunting. Adult chimps are sold as bushmeat but babies are more valuable as pets.

The government has signed protocols outlawing the practice but that did not deter Filibungan (32) from pedalling with his cargo in broad daylight through dozens of villages to the city of Kindu, a three-day journey of about 250km.

He had papers signed by the general confirming the order.

"I brought another chimp to the general four months ago and he wanted a second one, so I commissioned the hunters to get this one." The mother was chopped up for meat.

Happy to have publicity, Mr Delivery said he could furnish babies on demand to Guardian readers.

"Give me two months and $100 and I'll give you a chimp."

At current rates of slaughter central Africa's remaining wild apes will disappear within 20 years, according to the United States-based Bushmeat Project.

In west Africa the situation is worse. Chimpanzees have vanished from Benin, Gambia and Togo and fewer than 900 remain in Senegal and Ghana.

The DRC's vast jungles afforded the primates greater protection, but a decade of war has driven soldiers and civilians deeper into the forests, where they hunt bushmeat to survive.

Considered a delicacy, the meat of an adult chimp can fetch $25, a hefty sum in a country where the average per capita annual income is just $100.

Only the well-off can afford it. "It's very good meat, chimp. Like elephant, but more tender. My children love it," said Daniel Mbungu, a university-educated rural development planner on a retainer from a western aid agency.

Wealthy clients who pay up to $100 for a baby chimp pet are encouraging the slaughter, because for every baby that is sold nine die from disease and neglect, said Felix Lankester, of the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon.

In Kasongo, a town on Mr Delivery's route to Kindu, the Guardian was offered another baby chimp, a six-month-old female called Ton Ton, by a middleman who gave only his first name, Jean.

Ton Ton sat in the yard picking food from a blue pastic bowl beside a child doing the same thing. "We've had her a few months now.

"She thinks she's human. She very good with the children," Jean said.

Without elaborating he claimed that white visitors regularly bought chimps.

"Don't worry about documentation. We can sort that out for you at the airport to make everything legal."

Out in the forests, hunters sensed the bonanza would end soon, because chimps were becoming so rare. Yenga Yenga (47) a hunter with a wife and seven children to feed, said he was reduced to stalking monkeys, which fetched just $5.

His colleague, Albert Lutamba (45) complained that the last chimp he bagged was in June.

Lutamba was on his way to Kasongo with a bicycle laden with six monkey carcasses.

Over his shoulder he carried a seventh, the tail tied around its neck to form a handle.

"There used to be a lot more chimps. They're disappearing so fast I doubt my children will be hunting them at all," Yenga said. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004