By Gretchen Vogel Mar. University of Nottingham BBDTP CASE 2020 CASE Projects Investigating the Relationship of Overall Health with a Focus on Cardiovascular Health, Serum Biomarkers and Vitamin D Levels in the European Chimpanzee Population. Ecological Region “A sanctuary isn’t just about taking care of the animals. Green: Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee distribution So do its elephants, Activists in Malaysia call on road planners to learn the lessons of history, Road-paving project threatens a wildlife-rich reserve in Indonesia’s Papua. Sierra Leone only has around 6% of its natural forest left and it’s impossible to release chimps into an area where other wild chimps already exist, and pointless re-releasing them where they can’t be given any protection. Space is also at a premium, Amarasekaran says. At Tacugama, Amarasekaran says, we “don’t just focus on confiscations and running an orphanage; we are movement, we  do a lot more.”. Our EIN or tax ID is 45-3714703. In recent years, Côte d’Ivoire has become a center for animal trafficking, as efforts to create a national chimp sanctuary have stalled. FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. Every day, Mongabay reporters bring you news from nature’s frontline. “Other sanctuaries and conservation organizations talk of road blocks and problems with government – I have never experienced that,” Amarasekaran says. Today, the largest populations are found in Côte d'Ivoire and in Guinea. WWF treats priority species as one of the most ecologically, economically and/or culturally important species on our planet. Sanctuaries are there for the long term, he says, and this allows them to build up trust with communities, play a role in alleviating poverty, and develop better relationships with the authorities. “You can’t make the chimpanzee the national animal and then not have laws to protect it,” he says. Blue: Eastern chimpanzee distribution. Subsistence hunting of chimpanzees as a source of meat is nothing new, but there is now a thriving but unsustainable commercial market for bushmeat (the meat of … “Some of them are just so busy trying to ensure the welfare of the animals they are maintaining in captivity that they don’t have much time to develop strategic planning or project impact monitoring,” he says. Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) mother with youngster, captive, Chimfunshi Orphanage, Zambia. The population of the western chimpanzee once spanned from southern Senegal all the way east to the Niger River. The total population is thought to be about 21,000-55,000 individuals. Yet in all this, Amarasekaran says he is careful to make sure it is the authorities, not the sanctuary, that takes the plaudits. A chimpanzee reaches towards the camera at Tchimpounga in the Republic of the Congo. Because of their autonomy, Turay says sanctuaries have an important role to play in “making a noise,” raising international and community awareness, and forcing governments into action. In the 1970’s, for example, records indicated a population size of around 200. “Their raison d’être is rescuing these animals … which arrive in the most appalling conditions,” she says. To bring the remaining chimps, we need to build the second phase of our sanctuary, with new chimp houses and companion outdoor habitats.” West Africa’s chimpanzee population has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, falling from an estimated 1 million to fewer than 300,000 today. One of the greatest threats to the wild chimpanzees is loss of habitat, the African forest, from commercial logging, agriculture and fires. 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The dramatic decline in the Gombe chimpanzee population is largely due to a significant reduction in suitable forested habitat for the great apes. sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Police and other law enforcement agencies don’t want to arrest someone who has a live chimpanzee if there’s nowhere to put it — they don’t want to be taking care of a baby chimp for the next 50 years.”. Whether nonhuman primates exhibit population-level handedness remains a topic of considerabe theoretical and empirical debate. David Greer, who also worked in primate conservation for 25 years, including a stint at the WWF and running a wildlife sanctuary, says he agrees that sanctuaries play a pivotal role in chimp conservation. Recently, when animal traffickers were tipped off that the authorities were closing in, they fled. Candid Animal Cam spots badgers, Top 10 environmental news stories of 2020. Chimpanzees have been observed to soak up water with leaves. Then a mining company showed up, Why do Eurasian badgers live with foxes? A new memorandum of understanding is on the table that could establish the Akatia sanctuary. DONATE HERE. The Bossou apes have a unique relationship with the village population. Kay Farmer, who helped establish the Limbe sanctuary in Cameroon, and has since completed a Ph.D. in chimpanzee reintroduction, describes sanctuaries as “a very visible example of failed conservation.” If conservation was working, she says, chimpanzees wouldn’t be coming into the sanctuaries. The Maryland Zoo is welcoming a baby female chimpanzee to first-time mom Raven, a crucial addition to the Baltimore zoo’s chimpanzee population. Rehabilitating and releasing a chimpanzee back into the wild is expensive. Sanctuary managers are passionate, Greer says, but they’re rarely traditionally trained conservationists. The sanctuary helps run the national park, supplies rangers for anti-poaching and logging patrols, and contributes significantly to the local economy, buying more than 5 tons of food a month and employing 30 permanent staff. Range States Within 30 minutes they were inundated with phone calls about the poachers’ whereabouts. Chimpanzee Utamu gave birth to a yet-to-be-named female baby around 3:30 a.m. yesterday, Oct. 28, 2020. Many arrive as the result of habitat destruction, as forests are cleared for agriculture, logging and extractive industries, as well as infrastructure developments, decimating family groups and leaving young chimps abandoned. Dramatic habitat loss by 2020 threatens the population of the planet's most endangered chimp subspecies, according to new research. “Great apes are very susceptible to human respiratory diseases, as we share 98% of the same DNA,” Tully says. Deforestation and commercial hunting for bushmeat are taking a terrible toll on most populations. Small, relict populations are found in Burundi and south-eastern Sudan. “To me, this underscores the importance of long-term care for confiscated primates — without this piece of the puzzle, law enforcement can break down.”. We use cookies to analyse how visitors use our website and to help us provide the best possible experience for users. Compared to chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary cousins, humans are particularly prone to developing advanced carcinomas—the type of … Chimpanzees are nearing extinction in many countries, due to deforestation and commercial hunting for bushmeat. The few chimps that are confiscated are sent to the local zoo, which have neither the capacity not the skill to care for them, she says. With more people living around the national park, surrounding forests have been cleared to make way for houses and farms, reducing the national park to a 35 square-kilometer island forest. “The majority are traumatized, dehydrated, they might have bullet wounds … They are experts at providing the triage … and getting those animals well again.”, Running a sanctuary is often a hand-to-mouth existence, Farmer says, with a constant battle to find operational funding. Western Chimpanzees Have Declined By 80 Percent Over The Past 25 Years The largest population of these animals—the only critically endangered chimp subspecies—sits in a … Chimpanzees vary considerably in size and appearance, but they stand approximately 1–1.7 meters (3–5.5 feet) tall when erect and weigh about 32–60 kg (70–130 pounds). “[They] need to enforce the law and establish deterrents.”, “In many African countries, the laws about wildlife are sadly outdated,” says PASA director Tully. Mongabay is a U.S.-based non-profit conservation and environmental science news platform. These safe havens can have a dramatic effect on the countries where they are established, caring for individual animals while also working to help stabilize populations, tighten laws, and stop the illegal trade in wildlife from flourishing. With habitat loss, hunting and wildlife trafficking taking their toll, chimps have now disappeared completely from four countries in the region. THE CHIMPANZEE population is the fast declining in the country. Working to sustain the natural world for the benefit of people and nature. The baby appears to be healthy and is … “Community development and education is a critical part of what we do,” Tully says. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page. While Amarasekaran describes reintroductions as “every sanctuary manager’s dream,” the reality can be different. Learn about the chimpanzee, as well as the threats this species faces, what WWF is doing to protect its future, and how you can help. Chimpanzee, common chimpanzee, robust chimpanzee; Chimpanzés (Fr); Chimpancé (Sp). That makes the western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) the only one of the four chimp subspecies to be declared critically endangered. Chimpanzees mainly eat fruit, leaves, flowers, seeds, bark, honey, insects, bird eggs, and meat. Poaching and disease also put the wild population at risk. Dryness? “That is the power that we do not have directly,” he says. “Sanctuaries quite simply haven’t got the time or the income to be carrying out audits and collect evidence and stats,” she says. 7, 2019 , 2:00 PM. As a great ape, chimpanzees are a WWF priority species. “Great ape reintroductions are extremely complicated, expensive, and time-consuming, and aren’t possible in many countries because of the high risk of poaching and weak enforcement of protected areas,” he says. “Sanctuaries can do a lot more simply because sanctuaries invest in the country; other big organizations, they come and go. The government “has refused to have a sanctuary for many, many years and now they have lost almost all their forest and they’ve lost almost all their chimps,” Raballand says. Jan. 8, 2020 at 5:10 p.m. UTC. “You focus on the goal, not about who did it.”, Babar Turay, a conservation manager at Sierra Leone’s National Protected Area Authority, an agency within the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, has worked closely with Amarasekaran. The work … As a result, many of the bigger funders simply won’t give to sanctuaries. By integrating communities into conservation initiatives, Raballand says, people become “drivers of change” and develop a much greater respect for local biodiversity, leading to far fewer conflicts between humans and chimpanzees. When sanctuaries accept an animal, he says, part of the deal with the authorities must be that the poachers, traders and those who illegally own chimpanzees are prosecuted and proper sentences are handed down. “They have no management whatsoever of the wildlife trade.”. ENMs for each population were also projected under three different climate change scenarios for years 2020… So, he says, “we have decided to focus on the 5,000-6,000 chimps that are still left in the wild and … on stopping them coming to the sanctuary.”, Tully says he agrees. One of Amarasekaran’s key achievements has been persuading the government to declare the chimpanzee the national animal. As such, we are working to ensure chimpanzees can live and thrive in their natural habitats. Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda At the rate of the chimpanzee populations are growing, one can estimate that in the next five to ten years, the estimated population will be about 200,000-350,000. Tacugama is considered to be one of theirs.”. by Mark Hillsdon on 26 May 2020 . These findings suggest that a positive relationship may exist between environmental variation and the partitioning of genetic variation found in chimpanzees across this region. This theoretical competition for funds is another reason why sanctuaries have been criticized, but it’s a point Tully is quick to refute. “It’s not just a case of opening a cage door and letting them go.”. hbspt.cta.load(5981609, '8f4c6e6c-f5b2-40c0-926e-1af2470257f3', {}); Mongabay is a reader-supported conservation and environmental science news service. “For these reasons, while PASA members would like to reintroduce more primates to the wild, it isn’t a top priority,” Tully says. (I accept). Currently, conservationists and scientists are putting together an action plan to protect Senegal’s western chimpanzee population… “We don’t go around with our hat begging. They have strong connections with the government and have spent years pushing to make changes happen and get government officials to realize that these chimpanzees have value as an iconic species,” Tully says. If you value this objective and impact-driven journalism, please consider becoming a sustaining member. It’s also easy to miss the point about why sanctuaries exist in the first place, she says. Chimpanzees are great apes found across central and West Africa. When chimpanzees encounter humans, it’s usually bad news for the chimps. “The money for conservation and the money for animal welfare are largely two different pots of money,” he says, with few donors giving to both. “Sanctuaries and big wildlife conservation organizations have to hold the government’s feet to the fire,” he says. As a result, sanctuaries are taking extra precautions to minimize the risk of coronavirus affecting the animals, with many staff remaining on site 24/7 to reduce the risk of bringing the chimps into contact with the virus. These strong community links also help with law enforcement. New technical guide describes how to run a participatory, consensus-led evaluation of ecosystem services, bringing together a diverse range of ... Biogeographic realm The primary threats to chimpanzees are habitat destruction, hunting, and disease. © 1986 Panda Symbol WWF – World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Guide to identifying ecosystem services in protected areas, Conservation of western chimpanzees in Tai National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, Conservation and monitoring of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees in Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria, Conservation of the Tongo populaton of eastern chimpanzees in the Virunga ecosystem, DRC, Supporting government efforts to supervise the management of Campo Ma’an National Park, Cameroon, and encourage sustainable use of forest resources in its buffer zone, Conservation of central chimpanzees in Mengame, Cameroon, Assisting the Ministry of Water and Forests in the Minkebe Conservation Project, a 6,000km2 area recently declared as a national park in Gabon. As a result, “It is difficult to measure whether these activities are having a positive impact on conservation objectives in the field.”. One continued subject of discussion is whether evidence of population-level handedness in primates is confined to studies in captive animals or whether it is in both captive and wild subjects. Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species. “In countries that don’t have sanctuaries, wildlife law enforcement is a lot weaker,” Tully says. “We are a very proud organization,” he says. The Tacugama sanctuary in Sierra Leonne was set up by Sri Lankan-born Bala Amarasekaran in 1995, and since then its success has been based on a mixture of hard work and shrewd diplomacy. “Sanctuaries are sometimes considered to be some roadside circus,” Amarasekaran says. 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