2009 is the year of the gorilla.  Habitat degradation, loss, and fragmentation in addition to the Ebola virus—a fatal zoonotic disease—and the bushmeat trade threaten these great primates.  Allie Wilkinson at “OH, FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE!” is doing her part by “participating in the 5K Run for the Wild.” You can help Allie by donating here. From Allie’s blog:

Ebola is reducing once healthy populations to a level where they are no longer resilient to other threats, such as poaching. Between ebola and poaching, it is estimated that the existing world population of gorillas could become extinct in the wild in the next 10 to 20 years.

Ebola in gorillas and other great apes may actually be preventable through vaccination, which has already been proven effective in monkeys. At least six experimental vaccines have protected laboratory monkeys from ebola virus. It takes a significant amount of funding to adapt the current ebola vaccine into one that will be safe and effective for great apes. People may be intimidated by the cost of vaccination, but one year of ebola vaccination could save as many apes as decades of anti-poaching.

“When people look back 100 years from now, most won’t even remember Iraq. One thing they will remember is that we sat by and did nothing while our closest relatives slipped away,” says Peter Walsh of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Antropology in Germany. ”This is a case where one wealthy individual could have an enormous impact. He or she could quite literally save gorillas from ecological extinction.”

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