28 May, 2002
NO HIDING PLACE (PARTS 1 and 2)
No Hiding Place tracks the plight of gorillas, chimpanzees and other wild animals, currently being hunted to the brink of extinction in the central African rainforests.
This two-part Earth Report was filmed and directed by Steve Couri who travelled central Africa on the poachers' trail, and will be broadcast in June on BBC World TV.
Africans have long since enjoyed bushmeat - wild animals - as a cultural preference but the species which were once hunted for food are now being pursued for pure profit by poachers - heavily armed and ruthless.
Increased logging of one of the world's last remaining rainforests is reducing the size of the animals' natural habitat and driving them into smaller and smaller spaces, tragically making the poachers' task easier.
"What amazed me was the craziness of it all", says Couri. "It was more or less anarchy. The poachers are often ex-soldiers, defected from armies or redundant now conflicts have finished. Armed and dangerous, there seems to be no one to stop them and it's often ordinary villagers who get caught in the crossfire".
No Hiding Place part 1 features harrowing footage of a slaughtered chimpanzee family and a group of poachers at work, dismembering and smoking the meat of an elephant to be sold in local markets. With a global market demanding more and more bushmeat, organised trafficking distributing it around the world and violent poachers stopping at nothing to maintain a supply - and their profits - the future looks pretty bleak for the great apes, chimps and other wildlife.
No Hiding Place part 2 looks deeper into the story and reveals that users of mobile phones are unwittingly worsening the situation. The appliances use the mineral coltan, obtained mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The spread of mobile phones across the world in recent years has led to a coltan boom in eastern DRC, home to 80% of the world's coltan reserves, but also to the last large groups of the eastern lowland gorilla.
GRASP, (the Great Apes Survival Project), is a project that has been launched by the UN Environment Programme (Unep) and Unesco. It says there is evidence suggesting that in the last five years the eastern lowland gorillas have declined by 80-90%, with just 3,000 or so animals left alive.
Dr Jane Goodall, renowned for her four decades of work with chimpanzees, tells TVE the problem has become acute, and initiatives like GRASP could prove vital if the great apes are to have a future.
No Hiding Place - Part 1 is broadcast on BBC World from Monday June 3rd - Sunday June 9th and No Hiding Place - Part 2 from Monday June 10th - Sunday June 16th at the following times (GMT): Mon 21:30; Tues 01:30, 09:30; Sat 18:30, Sun 07:30. For full website backup including links for further information, go to www.tve.org/earthreport
tve is a collective name for Television for the Environment and Television Trust for the Environment. Television for the Environment is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (registered office 21 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RP, company number 1811236)and a registered charity (charity number 326585). Television Trust for the Environment is a registered charity (charity number 326539).