Our endangered siblings
I HAVE always felt that an injustice was done when science classified different species on earth, because it was done by an interested party. Had humanity not been the interested party, we would have been the fifth great ape.
We are not different from the great apes in any significant way. When we regard chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, or bonobos, we are looking at a family member.
As recently revealed, the genetic makeup of chimpanzees and humans is virtually identical, and the apes' evolutionary divergence from mankind is almost irrelevant in chronological terms.
Years of research has revealed that the great apes make tools, self-medicate, possess activities for culture and language-like communications, practice stress relief and conflict management, and even wage war. They mourn, envy, laugh, console, resent, and reconcile, and their emotions and personalities are so evocative of humanity that recent studies have focused on relatively mundane aspects such as whether chimpanzees are naturally right-handed.
But at a time when humanity is beset by tsunamis, hurricanes, famine, drought, and other byproducts of climate change -- in addition to man-made conflicts around the globe -- it is worth considering the precarious situation facing the great apes. Simply stated, some species could be extinct in the wild within 25 years, and all four could vanish within my granddaughter's lifetime.
Chimpanzees have already disappeared from four countries where they once thrived, and a great ape atlas released this month by the United Nations Great Apes Survival Project revealed that the natural habitats of most great apes are compromised by human encroachment and extractive industries such as logging and mining. It is no accident that the shrinking equatorial forests across Africa and Asia parallel the disappearance of the great apes themselves; like the residents of the Gulf Coast in America, the great apes are increasingly homeless. Even where their forests survive, they often are intensely hunted.
The one way in which we are better than apes is in our minds, so it's time to use them. Representatives from 21 African and Asian nations met this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa, to sign the Declaration on Great Apes, the first UN-level document that commits the countries in which great apes live to protecting them. Organized by the Great Apes Survival Project, a unique partnership between nations, donors, scientists, and supporters, the declaration may be the best, last hope the great apes will have.
The declaration is based upon a global strategy that issues an ''immediate challenge to lift the imminent extinction facing most populations of great apes." But it does much more than that. It also binds the delegates together as partners and asks them to assemble the relevant documents -- such as an atlas, treaties, memorandums of understanding, and a prioritization of crisis spots -- that can lead to a coherent plan of action.
The declaration is not designed to leverage money or spur a financial bailout, but recent G8 developments have made it clear that funding alone can never solve Africa's problems. But the problem currently facing great apes is not a shortage of money; rather, it is a shortage of strategy. Will the declaration save the great apes by itself? No. But it has created the framework in which nations that recognize the need to work together can do so.
Humanity has suffered greatly in recent years, and there is no real relief in sight. But mankind's compassion in even the worst of times is perhaps our greatest strength. That is why a simple Declaration on Great Apes -- signed in a city that has known civil war and disease and corruption and suffering far too long -- gives me hope. By reaching out to our chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and bonobo brothers, we have shown the best of humanity and closed a gap that was never that great to begin with.
Richard Leakey, a paleoanthropologist and environmentalist, is a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Program's Great Apes Survival Project. 
