Ten years ago, the jungles of Ivory Coast were filled with the whistling and low roars of as many as a dozen primates all day long, and now they can no longer be heard.
Today, the country of West Africa is much quieter. The former forest is nowhere to be found, leaving behind the monkeys they used to feed. Several of them are on the verge of extinction. One may be extinct.
Who is to blame? chocolate.
Rather, the problem is the cocoa (Theobroma cacao), the main ingredient in chocolate and related products. Côte d'Ivoire produces more than a third of the world's cocoa – it produced 1.7 million tonnes last year – enough to make countless Easter chocolate rabbits.
Unfortunately, all of these cocoa did not come out of thin air. According to an article published last week in Tropical Conservation Science, a significant portion of the jungle in the Ivorian protected area has been deforested in the past few years as a result of the establishment of illegal cocoa farms.
The former Marahoué National Park has been completely transformed into cocoa estates and villages
"While we didn't expect to find real virgin forests there, we never expected the cocoa farms there to be so impressive," said W. Scott McGraw, an anthropology professor at O.S.U. and co-author of the paper. McGraw and his team surveyed 23 protected areas and found that seven of them had been completely reduced to farms. Nearly 80% of the land is used for cocoa cultivation.
Cocoa beans dried in the sun
There are also illegal cocoa farms in 13 other areas. In total, the researchers found in the survey that more than 74 percent of what should have been protected areas was occupied by cocoa farms.
Bush deforestation, and the accompanying poaching, have exacerbated the condition of the Ivorian primates. Five of the protected areas surveyed lost more than half of their primate species. Unfortunately, the researchers found that there were no more primates in 13 other areas.
Three species of primates in the easternmost jungles of Côte d'Ivoire suffered the most. The Ghanaian long-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus roloway) and the white-necked white-browed monkey (Cercocebus atys lunulatus) have only been sighted in two protected areas. The survival of these two primates is already seriously threatened; researchers suggest they should be classified as endangered species. No third primate, Miss Watton Red Colobus badius waldronae, was found in the survey, and it is likely to be extinct.
To illustrate why the monkey population in Côte d'Ivoire has plummeted, the Ghanaian long-tailed monkey is a typical example. "It's a beautiful animal, very smart, but the problem is that they don't seem to be very well-suited outside the jungle," McGraw said. This monkey recipe is very fixed. "They only eat ripe fruit that grows in the canopy of trees high up, and these trees are decreasing."
Monkeys hunted
The Ghanaian long-tailed monkey faces a disaster that goes beyond jungle deforestation. "Because of their noise, they're also a very good monkey to find," McGraw said. "Hunters find them effortlessly." McGrraw believes it has the potential to become the next primate to disappear from Côte d'Ivoire.
The good news, though, is that McGraw is referring to a community-based bio-monitoring program led by O.S.U and supported by multiple nature conservation organizations. The operation recruited former hunters and farmers and made them wildlife inspectors. "They went into the jungle to dismantle the traps," McGraw said. "Once new cocoa saplings were found, they were cut down, they also expelled poachers, and had a noticeable positive impact" In just four years, the number of primates in the jungle carried out by these operations increased by 37 percent.
McGraw acknowledges that similar projects are very difficult to raise. "We're always trying to find money, but thankfully it's okay now."
However, McGraw believes that even outside of Côte d'Ivoire, Cocoa will still occupy some of the primates' habitat and threaten their survival. "Few primates can thrive in cocoa-growing areas, whether these plantations are legal or illegal." He said.
What can consumers do? McGrraw advises consumers to buy shade-grown cocoa instead of the "full-sun" cocoa produced on most cocoa farms, which requires massive deforestation of natural trees that cause animals to lose their habitat. In addition, cocoa is purchased with certified marks such as Fair Trade (note: Fair Trade) to ensure that the cocoa purchased comes from sustainable resources.
Despite the grim form, McGraw is optimistic. "Those primates are waiting to go home," he said in the report. "If we can return farmland to forest, they can reproduce again." If not, then we may have to taste more bitter fruit in the future.
(By John R. Platt; Translated by Zhu Jinjie)