Joe Effiong, Uyo
The government and people of Akwa Ibom State on Tuesday gathered in Uyo, to brainstorm on ways to protect an endangered-monkey species said to be left only in a community in Itu local government area of the state.
The monkey species known as Cercopithecus sclateri, but locally known as Adiaha Awa Itam by the people Ikot Uso Akpan in Itu, is said to be going extinct due to poaching and massive deforestation which robs it of its natural habitat.
Then managing director of Ronel Consult Ltd, the consultants to the UNDP and Global Environmental Facility-sponsored project, Dr Isidore Akpan-Ebe, explained in his welcome address that the tropical rainforest which was once the jewel of the environment and the green blanket shielding the earth has suffered a lot of perturbations worldwide.
“This has resulted in high-scale deforestation, habitat fragmentation, changing land-use pattern, climate change and loss of biodiversity (plants and animals) worldwide, some of which have gone extinct.
The good news is that the UNDP and GEF both organs of the United Nations, have taken up the challenge and are today at the forefront of promoting and funding conservation projects around the world in order to heal the earth.
“It is, however, interesting to note that despite the perturbations going on in the tropical rain forest worldwide, which is the habitat to more than50% of world’s biodiversity, the presence of the critically endangered sclater’s monkey species (Cercopithecus sclateri) in Ikot Uso Akpa Itam, in Itu LGA of Akwa Ibom State has been established and documented.
“This has attracted the attention of UNDP and GEF to the community and they have worked tirelessly to ensure that this rare species does not go extinct in the area,” Akpan-Ebe said.
He said the a one-day promotional seminar on the endangered monkey species, was not just to bring to the fore, the presence of the monkey in the community, but to also sensitise the local and national conscience on the conflicts and responsibility borne by the local community for the conservation of the monkey, inform the general public of the burden borne by women and the youths in the responsibility for conservation of the globally-endangered monkey, and work towards placing the community in the world’s tourism map to make it a tourist destination in Nigeria.
The chairman on the occasion, Dr Valentine Attah, lamented that mankind’s closest relatives – the world’s monkeys, apes and other primates were disappearing from the surface of the earth, with some literally being eaten to extinction.
He said the main threats are habitat destruction, particularly from the burning and clearing of tropical forest that also emits at least 20% of the global Green House gases causing climate change, and the hunting of primates for food and illegal wildlife trade.
“We’ve raised concern for years about the primates being in peril, but we now have solid data to show that the situation is far worse than we imagine. The sclater monkey is threatened guenon endemic in Southern Nigeria.
“This workshop is, therefore, to showcase how the sclater monkey has found refuge in this free zone, following the destruction of their natural forest habitat as a result of the uncontrolled expansion of human and government activities and deforestations,” he said.