Great Apes

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, my predecessor Senator Patrick Leahy is known for many groundbreaking pieces of legislation over the course of his 48 years in the Senate. But he was also responsible for many initiatives that are not so well known, and I want to speak briefly about one of them.

From 1989 until his retirement in 2023, Senator Leahy served as either chairman or ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State Foreign Operations, and Related Programs which among other things funds U.S. assistance around the world. During those years, he built a record of strong support for programs to protect tropical forests and endangered species, which are under siege from illegal logging, mining, industrial scale agriculture, urban encroachment, and wildlife poaching and trafficking. One of those programs established by Senator Leahy was to protect our closest ancestors, the four species of great apes: orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos.

Each of these species faces the threat of extinction in the wild due to habitat loss and poaching. Some are killed for meat; others are captured and sold as pets. On the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only places where orangutans live, the rainforests are being cut down at a furious pace to make way for vast palm oil plantations. Habitat loss and poaching are similarly threatening the survival of the other three species of great apes in Africa.

By the end of President Trump's first term, funding to protect great apes had reached $45 million annually. The funds were administered by USAID and used by nongovernment organizations in Indonesia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for anti-poaching initiatives and strengthening law enforcement in local biological reserves and along international borders; promoting sustainable land use and forest management to safeguard areas critical to great apes; and working with local villagers to develop sustainable livelihoods and reduce reliance on poaching or destructive agricultural practices. USAID also partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through its Great Apes Conservation Fund, which provided grants for field projects in Africa and Indonesia.

In addition, the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has supported programs to strengthen the capacity of local law enforcement in Africa and Asia to combat wildlife trafficking and the money laundering, corruption, and violent crime associated with it.

While these efforts have helped stem the precipitous decline in the numbers of great apes, their survival in the wild remains far from assured. Transnational criminal organizations, catering to a rapacious Asian market for wildlife parts, are reaping huge profits from the illegal wildlife trade. These organizations are often also involved in trafficking drugs, weapons, and human beings. The ever-increasing demand for timber, minerals, and food in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is destroying wildlife habitat at an alarming rate. Rainforests are being transformed into polluted wastelands from mining, massive farms of oil palm and soybeans, and grazing land for cattle. Great apes, which like many species need large areas to forage for food, are being squeezed from all directions.

Despite the administration's disastrous decision to shut down USAID and destroy the careers of thousands of talented and dedicated USAID employees, Congress has continued to provide funding to protect endangered species, including great apes. But the amount of funding has been sharply reduced, and it remains to be seen whether the State Department will manage the funds in the manner intended by Congress.

Orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos are the only existing examples of our earliest apelike ancestors who first began walking upright nearly 4 million years ago. Despite having existed for millions of years and sharing 97 percent of our DNA, great apes today are entirely dependent on us for survival.

I have urged the Appropriations Committee to increase funding for great ape conservation while there is still time to protect them from extinction. I also urge the State Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to recognize what is at stake and to resume and significantly expand their efforts to protect great ape habitat and combat poaching and trafficking.

And finally, I urge the leaders of Indonesia and the central African countries that are home to great apes to recognize their unique responsibility to ensure the survival of these animals by protecting their forest habitat; greatly strengthening enforcement of anti- trafficking laws; supporting programs to rescue, rehabilitate, and return to the wild great apes that have been trafficked; and educating their people about the need to protect great apes and the forests they depend on.

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