IT IS the ‘11th hour’ for many primates as nearly two thirds are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.

Escalating pressure from human activities such as cutting down forests, expanding agriculture and building dams and roads are putting apes, monkeys and other primates at risk of dying out, researchers at Oxford Brookes University said.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, the team warned that without immediate action to protect them, human’s closest relatives face mass extinctions in the next 25 to 50 years.

One Oxfordshire institution fighting to save endangered species is Cotswold Wildlife Park near Burford.

The centre runs breeding programs for some of the rarest primates in the world and the Cotswold Wildlife Park Conservation Trust also raises funds for conservation and to educate and inform the public.

Oxford Mail:

Primate keeper Katie Wildman, pictured with some black and white colobus monkeys, said: “We are extremely proud of our conservation projects, especially for the Crowned sifaka and Greater bamboo lemurs – two of the most endangered primate species in the world.”

Aside from humans, there are 504 recognised species of primates, from the tiny Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur to the 200kg male western and eastern gorillas.

Around 60 per cent are under threat of extinction and 75 per cent are seeing declines in numbers.

Professor Anna Nekaris, professor in anthropology at Oxford Brookes and one of the report’s authors, said: “The impending extinction of our closest relatives should not be taken lightly.”