Ebola has wiped out a third of world’s chimps and gorillas since 1990 – Reports

While the world is battling to overcome the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) which has killed more than 5,000 people, it has been confirmed that the EVD is the single greatest threat to the survival of gorillas and chimpanzees.

The virus is as deadly for great apes as it is for humans – with mortality rates at approximately 95 per cent for gorillas and 77 per cent for chimpanzees and as with humans, these deaths tend to come in epidemics.

Current estimates suggest a third of the world’s gorillas and chimpanzees have died from Ebola since the 1990s.

In 1995, an outbreak is reported to have killed more than 90 per cent of the gorillas in Minkébé Park in northern Gabon.

In 2002-2003, a single outbreak of ZEBOV – the Zaire strain of Ebola – in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killed an estimated 5,000 Western gorillas.

It’s hard to accurately count such elusive creatures but the WWF estimates there are up to 100,000 left in the wild – so a single Ebola outbreak wiped out a considerable chunk of the world’s gorilla population.

Additional factors behind the declining numbers of Africa’s great apes are illegal trading in wildlife and bushmeat, war, deforestation and other infectious diseases.