As the human population continues its unprecedented expansion, the populations of more than half of the world's other primates continue their unprecedented decline. As the human population has soared to nearly 6 billion, other primate populations have dropped sharply, and the continued survival of many species is now in doubt.
Primates are now the most imperiled major order of mammals.
Tropical forests are losing their ecological integrity and this habitat degradation is the single biggest problem facing nearly 90 percent of threatened primate species. Even where primates still find ample habitat, they often face heavy hunting pressure, both from subsistence hunters and commercial hunting for bush meat, the pet trade and biomedical research. Tuxill discusses various primate conservation projects and their integration into both the landscapes and the societies in which they are situated. The struggle to save primates is no different from the struggle to conserve any other aspect of the planet's biological wealth. But what primates do better than other kinds of wildlife is to capture and return our gaze in kind, communicating the past, present, and future bonds we share with all life.