[00:00.12]Scientists who study primates say that we are moving towards a time
[00:07.88]when species like gorillas will no longer be found in the wild .
[00:15.68]They say Orangutans would be gone too.
[00:19.96]And Madagascar would lose its lemurs.
[00:25.40]Jo Setchell is a primatologist at Durham University in Britain.
[00:32.52]She studies primates, the group of mammals that includes gorillas,
[00:38.96]chimps, monkeys, gibbons, mandrills, and lemurs.
[00:45.36]And, of course, humans.
[00:48.00]"So If we have 60 percent threatened with extinction at the moment, then we will see that number rise
[00:54.04]and within our lifetimes, within our children's lifetimes, we will eradicate other primates."
[01:00.64]In all, there are an estimated 600 different species of primates.
[01:08.04]They include the little creature called the mouse lemur,
[01:13.60]whose body is only about six centimeters long.
[01:20.20]Then, there is the largest of the species, the gorilla, weighing up to 250 kilograms.
[01:30.44]Primates face one common threat: loss of habitat,
[01:35.92]the places in nature where they live.
[01:39.64]Primatologists like Setchell say human activity is to blame.
[01:47.36]"... the major problem is habitat loss and habitat conversion,
[01:51.44]and essentially it's humans changing primate habitat into human habitat
[01:56.20]- logging for timber, logging for conversion to agriculture, logging for cattle ranching;
[02:02.64]anything essentially that destroys tropical forests because primates are largely tropical forest species."
[02:09.00]More than half of all primate species are grouped in four countries:
[02:16.28]Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
[02:24.56]Paul Garber says each of these countries is working to help protect the primates in their areas.
[02:33.88]"But often, there is neither the funds, community support
[02:38.96]nor in-country expertise to address their conservation problems."
[02:46.48]Madagascar is a good example of these problems, he says.
[02:51.92]It is home to over 100 primate species; almost all of them live nowhere else.
[03:00.80]And 94 percent of them are endangered.
[03:06.68]Ninety percent of the original forests of Madagascar have been cut down, Garber says.
[03:16.04]Neither Garber nor Setchell have any easy answers about how to stop this road to extinction.
[03:25.64]"We knew that primates were in trouble, but I think even for those of us who work  in primate conservation,
[03:30.96]it was still shocking to discover quite what the scale of the problem is."
[03:35.28]They do say that the clearest way is to slow human activity in primates' habitats.
[03:45.56]They also say the decrease is reversible
[03:50.09]if humans make primate and habitat conservation a top concern.
[03:59.04]I'm Anne Ball.