Satellite imagery has received a high-profile media push while aiding recovery efforts following recent disasters such as the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region or the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2004. But conservationists are looking to satellite imagery to help save a different group of animals — great apes.

Scientists argue that the extinction of the great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — is imminent unless strict conservation practices are implemented in the immediate future. Part of that conservation effort is focused on preserving forests, the apes’ natural habitat. That is where satellite imagery plays a vital role.

To illustrate the threat to the ape population, the Woods Hole Research Center noted that, in West Africa, most of the dense humid forest has been converted to agriculture, causing a fragmentation of the chimpanzee habitat. In Southeast Asia, industrial logging followed by industrial palm plantations have destroyed an extensive tract of orangutan habitat.

“The idea of using imagery [stems from the fact that] there is very little information on the distribution of great apes,” Nadine Laporte, an assistant scientist with Woods Hole, told Satellite News. “The advantage of remote sensing is that you can assess the integrity of the habitat, because most of the great apes are dependant on the forest environment for survival. Satellite imagery is valuable to see the [amount] of degradation of the forest and whether there is some kind of human use of these forests, like logging, mining or encroachment from agriculture.”

Getting that information in a timely manner is key. Woods Hole, in collaboration with the Harvard Peabody Museum and the Max Plank Institute, are working together as part of the Great Ape Survival Project, or GRASP. The effort, launched under the auspices of the United Nations in 2001, is intended to help save the great ape population.

Preliminary findings by the GRASP project show that Africa is home to more than 70 percent of the priority great apes population, with 51 percent of those found in Central Africa, where large tracts of forest habitat are still untouched by agriculture or logging.

“The situation is changing fast, and we need to put in place operational forest monitoring systems in each of the great apes range countries,” Laporte said. Ideally, if GRASP can secure the proper funding, the group can look at fresh satellite imagery on a yearly basis to determine “the rate of deforestation or to determine if the forest is still there.” She added satellite imagery could be used to give credit to countries that are doing their part to help conserve the habitats and penalize those who are not.

–Gregory Twachtman

(Elizabeth Braun, Wood Hole Research Center, 508/540-9900)