Chimpanzee Conservation Centre

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 23 2009 | By: chimpanzeeconservation

Hey, it’s Chris

I would like first to thank Wanda, Sherri and Lucia for their kind donations (I still do not understand why they do not appear on the page…), we really appreciate it, thank you!

When I read all the posts from Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary about their release, it reminds me all the events we went through last year… all the years of hard work to prepare everything for the Day of the release! I am glad for the bonobos, for Claudine and all the staff of Lola. To release the animals you have taken care of for years is like the most wonderful reward. They are back in the wild where they belong and where from they should have never been removed in the first place.

Estelle officially became director of the Chimpanzee Conservation Center 10 years ago and releasing chimps back into the wild has always been her objective. That’s what she explained to me when we first met before I went to Guinea in December 1999. It was completely unrealistic at the beginning; there was so much to do first before we could even consider releasing chimps: build a vast enclosure for the adult group, find a release site, develop an education program, improve considerably the veterinarian protocols and the day-to-day monitoring of their health and wellbeing, etc. And year after year, things improved: thanks to WSPA, a huge enclosure was built in 2001, we started to prospect for a release site in 2002 (and we finally chose the release site in 2005 after studies in 4 different locations; based on different criteria , an area 30 km from the sanctuary in the park was selected as the most favorable site for release), we built a vet-room in 2001 and implemented vet protocols since 2000 and we started an education program with really small means at the beginning, but now we are proud to have done a lot even if there is still a lot to do (we also took part in the Chimpanzee Conservation and Sensitization Program nationally focused on Guinea and Sierra-Leone managed by the Jane Goodall Institute in collaboration with Tacugama in Sierra Leone. This program ran between 2005 and 2007). 

The released was planned for June 2007 but civil unrests in January 2007 completely paralyzed the country for 3 months. This resulted in delays in the release preparations so we decided it would be more reasonable to postpone it by one year as we wanted to release the chimps in June (the rainy season), when there are plenty of wild fruits in the forest.

So the rest of 2007 and the  first 6 months of 2008 were dedicated to preparing the release: build a camp close to the release site, conduct more surveys in the area of the release site, sensitize the local population explaining them what was going to happen, etc. Everybody worked really hard during that year, in order to get everything ready on time; levels of stress were running high.

The office at the release site

Equipping the chimps with collars

Arrival at the release site

Twelve chimps were released on the 27th of June 2008, 6 males and 6 females. The youngest, Andrew, born at the sanctuary in 2000, was released with his mum Lottie, as well as Laurence, 9 years old, released with her mum Nana. Four males were equipped with Argos-GPS-VHF collars, 5 females were equipped with VHF-GPS store-on-board collars. Andrew and Laurence were equipped only with their dummy collars, as they were teenagers and still growing, we preferred not to equip them with real collars. The dummy collars were very loose (so they could remove them easily should they wish to) and would not impede their growth while allowing us or other people if necessary to recognize that they were released chimpanzees. Orlando and Nana removed their collars early on after release so we lost their tracks. But recently, Estelle may have sighted them not so far from the release site and a team will go there soon to double check. Nana was the oldest chimp of the released group and she has always been really independent of humans and really behaved like a chimp, and Orlando, the most subordinate male in the group, has always been a close friend of Nana, so it is really possible that they stayed together and survived.Laurence, Nana’s daughter, born at the sanctuary in 1999, came back at the sanctuary just one month after the release and jumped back in her enclosure! But she did not come back by herself, she brought a friend, a “wild female”! When you think about it, it is not so surprising that Laurence came back. She was born at the sanctuary and grew up in “captivity” (it is the only environment she has known since birth), so it might have been a little bit disappointing for her to be totally free without the security of a fence around her! She will be released with the next group and we hope she will feel more comfortable then.

During the days following the release, the chimps split in several groups and after a while some of them headed south by themselves. Was it the stress of their new freedom? Or just the thrill to discover their new environment and explore it? We reunited some of them and they were really happy to see each other again. This gave us the opportunity to spend some amazing time with them in the forest and to see how relaxed and well adapted to their environment they are.

Estelle, helped by Matthieu and Adam, and local keepers, made an incredible journey of 5 days with Robert in August 2008 to bring him back to the release site were 3 females who had stayed together -Robert went by himself to the south-east and his Argos-collar gave us his location. They walked for 50kms through dense vegetation during the rainy season and Robert was clearly self-sufficient during their trek, even if they had to give him some extra food because of the intense effort of travelling such a long distance in such a short time. When they arrived at the release site, Robert was really glad to be reunited with Mama, Nanou and Zira.

Robert during the long trip

 Mama, Zira and Nanou

Zira left this group after a while and she traveled quite a lot between the release site and the sanctuary. She was located thanks to her VHF collar as often as possible, sometimes volunteers could see her, she was healthy and did not seek contact with humans. She started to frequent the core area of a wild chimpanzees community (we surveyed that area, and we found many chimps nests, feces, food remains, etc.) and it became harder and harder to get a visual on her. Finally, last week, Matthieu spent one day tracking her and he saw her from a distance with wild chimpanzees! We are so happy for her! We hope she will get pregnant soon and give birth to a new “wild” baby chimp…

A chimpanzee nest found in Zira area

Lottie and her son Andrew headed South-West of the Mafou forest core area of the Park. They were monitored regularly but in November, at the beginning of the dry season, it was decided to bring them back to the release site to reunite them with the others as the habitat where they were was not ideal (very dry in the dry season and far from water access points). Lottie was really happy to see Mama, her best friend at the sanctuary. Sadly enough, her son Andrew left this group but he has been seen on several other occasions since, and the last time it was maybe with Orlando and Nana. The teams there need to get more information on these 3 chimps.

Two other males, Albert and Rappa, had moved to the south of the Mafou forest core area of the Park, they stayed together for a while and then split. They were too far to check on them regularly but we were following their daily movements thanks to their Argos collar. Finally, in February of his year, we were able to reach them and I brought back Albert to Rappa helped by our scientific advisor, Dr Humle. We walked in one day 8 kms and spent 2 nights in the forest with Albert before finding Rappa and reunite them. We did not feed Albert at all during that week, he had been by himself for 7 months and he was perfectly healthy. We walked quite slowly to give him the time to find food and we were really impressed by his diet diversity (leaves, fruits, including termites). When we reunited them, helped by 2 other volunteers, Rappa was so happy to find his friend! We then monitored these 2 chimps for a while and they were brought back to the release site to reunite them with Robert’s group in May. They are all together now: 3 males and 3 females.

Albert, the day we found him

Albert and Rappa, grooming each other

Albert and Rappa feeding in a Pterocarpus sp. tree

John, a sweet and strong male, also left the others few days after the release. He went quite far as well and we were monitoring him thanks to his Argos collar. But for the same reason as Lottie and Andrew (the forest where he was not the most suitable during dry season months and it was becoming hard for him to find water), so it was decided to bring him back in November. It was a long journey so he was brought back by car and sadly he never recovered from the anesthesia. We were all devastated by his loss as he managed to live by himself and to adapt to his new freedom for months and really was a very capable and smart chimp. We miss him a lot.

 A team tracking the chimps

So except for the loss of John, we are quite glad that all the other 10 chimps who are free in the park are healthy and self-sufficient. It is still too early to confidently say that this release is a success but this first year taught us a lot. The males have successfully avoided wild males and groups of wild chimpanzees (even if Andrew has been seen once with a wild female), and they all know enough to survive (to find their food, to build their nest, to avoid natural predators like leopards, etc.). Zira has integrated a wild group and she avoids now human contact with our teams.

We still need to learn more about this first release in order to prepare the next one. We still have to analyze a lot of data (e.g. all the data provided by the Argos collars plus all the GPS points that will be recovered soon from all the collars. The batteries of these collars will be running out soon and we had to re-equipped all the chimps with new simple VHF collars as we are now more confident that the chimps will stay together and it will be easier to follow them) to understand their ranging and travel patterns and their use of different habitat types and to be able to prepare the next release.

We still don’t know when the next group will be released as we want to prepare everything as perfectly as we can. We have to learn from our successes as well as from our past mistakes. But now, for everybody working at the sanctuary, the released chimpanzees remind us why and how we have to rehabilitate the young chimpanzees and that someday some of them will be ready to be released back into the wild.

Thanks to the released chimpanzees, we will be able to know more about what they can find and eat in the forest and so teach that to the youngsters. It is really easier to work now when you know why and how best to go about it to ensure success!I will keep you posted about the news of the released chimpanzees as often as possible!

Mama

best wishes 

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 09 2009 | By: chimpanzeeconservation

I would like to start by presenting myself. I am Chris, I was for 7 years the head vet and manager of the sanctuary. Since July 2007, I still go back several months per year, in rotation with Estelle, director of the sanctuary, and Matthieu, our new manager. So that those of us who are not in Guinea can take care of all the fundraising and administrative stuff. We have an American NGO, Project Primates Inc. and a French association, Projet Primate France which both help the Center to raise funds, to find volunteers, to develop projects, etc.

In Guinea, we have no easy internet access, only Conakry (2 days drive from the sanctuary) has descent cybercafes. This is why the person who is not in Guinea is in charge of updating blogs etc. We are in regular phone contact with each other so the person always knows what is going on.

So at the moment I am the one who is not in Guinea!

I spoke with Matt yesterday and he gave me the latest news from the sanctuary. They organized a big education event in Faranah, the biggest city closest to the sanctuary (81km, which can be a 3 to 6 h drive depending on the season!) where we go every WE for supplies etc. An expatriate volunteer with our local educator Ibro have been organizing this big event for weeks.

They first carried out an education campaign in all the schools of the city weeks before, and chose with the teachers 5 classes to participate actively to the big day. The kids took part in a drawing competitions  on the theme of chimpanzee conservation and forest protection, and the winning drawings were displayed during the event in Faranah.

A famous local troop of dancers and drummers also took part in the event with a performance relating the life of chimpanzees. Unfortunetly for now this is all I know, but I look forward to seeing and videos of this special event. Matt said it was a great success both with adults and kids. The education team screened weeks before the events films about the life of wild chimps and everybody was very keen to learn more about their cousins who they sometimes meet in the forest. Although humans and chimpanzees live side by side, people really don’t know a lot about chimps and it is quite interseting to see that they realize how close we are in our way of life (their social bonds, their community life, how mothers take care of their offspring, what they eat, how they sleep, how they make and use tools..).

Ibro, our local educator, with an expatriate volunteer, regularly drives hundred of kilometers by motorbike on dirt track roads to visit villages throughout the Parc. He is really dedicated to the sensitization program and loves meeting people and speaking about chimps and the environment. He generally tries to reach all the people in a village, men (who generally hunt, fish and help with slash- and burn-agriculture), women (who cultivate and harvest in the fields and face sometimes wildlife conflicts), and children (who are in charge of protecting the fields against wild animals such as vervet monkeys, patas, sometimes wild chimps, duikers, etc.). For the last 3 months, the team has used films about wild chimps to show people how these beautiful creatures live: like us, they live in community with strong social bonds, the infants stay and are dependant on their mother for years, they use tools, they have feelings and strong personalities, and like the local villagers depend on the forest and its resources to survive. People love these films. Few people before now have taken the time to tell them more about the lives of chimpanzees, although they have immense knowledge of the forest, its plants and animals in general. They traditionally also do not hunt and eat chimpanzees in the locality, although sometimes people do breech these traditions. Villagers learn more by watching these films than by listening to long speeches.

The team has visited almost all the villages of the southern part of the Park and plans soon to visit others in the northern part. It is also important to remind the local population why protecting the Park is so important as more and more foreigners to the locality enter the park to practice illegal hunting on a commercial scale to provide the national bushmeat market. Local people are more and more angry with these foreign hunters who kill animals indiscriminately. The local people are the ones who can help the local authorities protect this beautiful Park which suffers a lot from illegal activities, including logging. The education program will continue this summer if the weather conditions allow the team to access remote villages!

To give Shery more info on Paco: Paco is the sweetest young male of the sanctuary. He was confiscated by the Guinean authorities from someone from the military in June 2003 in Conakry. Paco was then send to us. We know nothing of his past, for how long he had been kept in captivity. But when he arrived at the sanctuary he showed really quickly that he knew quite well the forest and when he was introduced with 3 other young females in quarantine, he hugged them like saying “hey my friends, here you are! I am so glad to meet some of my own kind…” It was so moving… We think Paco was captured when he was 2 or 3 years old because of his strong abilities in the forest and his perfect “chimp” behavior. But he still shows scares of his capture and days in captivity: he received at least 6 led pellets when his mum got shot by the poacher, 3 on his arms, 1 on his neck, 1 on his hip, and 1 on his left eye which he subsequently lost. He could have died but he survived… During his first days at the sanctuary, he let me remove the ones on his arm under local anesthesia, he just watched me, he was so sweet, I could not believe it! We found out the others on his neck and hip much later, we decided to leaves these as they do not seem to bother him. The one in his eye cannot be removed, as it would involved a too dangerous surgical proceedure (the brain is really close) to be carried out under our field conditions.

Paco is now part of the group of teenagers and young adults, he is a subordinate male, he is really nice with everybody, especially the females. He is also a really good actor: during feeding, when he picks up food he screams and cries like a baby whilst watching the dominant males - even if these guys do not even pay attention to him! - it is his way of saying ”please, let me take this food!”. We hope he will be part of the next group of chimps to be released, in 2010 or 2011!

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 06 2009 | By: chimpanzeeconservation

The Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC) is located in Guinea-Conakry, West Africa. The sanctuary was created in 1997 to rescue and rehabilitate orphan chimpanzees victims of the bushmeat and pet trade and to release as many of them as possible back to the wild. The Center works in close collaboration with the Guinean authorities. 

Kirikou at the entrency of the sanctuary

The sanctuary is located in one of the two strictly protected core areas of the Haut-Niger National Park (HNNP), one of the only two national parks in Guinea and the largest in size extending over c. 10,000 km² . The park is one of the last remaining important formations of dry-forest-savanna mosaics in West Africa. It comprises 94 mammalian species, including chimpanzees, vervets, patas, baboons, black and white colobus, bushbabies, buffaloes, hartebeests, waterbucks, red river hogs, warthogs, lions, leopards, hippopotamus, as well as different kinds of antilopes and duikers, and more than 100 species of birds, etc.

Today there are 37 chimpanzees at the sanctuary and 10 young adults released in the HNNP.

Guinea probably harbors the biggest population of Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in West Africa, with a population estimated between 8000 and 20000 individuals. Several surveys are currently underway in Guinea to get more precise estimates. The HNNP harbors approximately 400-500 wild chimpanzees. But chimpanzees in Guinea are facing the same threats as everywhere else in Africa: destruction of their habitat because of agricultural encroachment, forest destruction because of illegal logging, and mining for bauxite, iron, gold, diamonds (Guinea possosses the second highest reserve of bauxite in the world, just after Australia), the bushmeat market and the pet trade of orphans. Guinea is a predominantly muslim country, so there is a religious taboo on consuming chimpanzee meat (and primate meat in general); such a religious taboo also exists in some anemist populations located in the southeastern Guinea. Nevertheless since bushmeat is locally cheaper than domestic meat, despite religious taboos, chimpanzees are still being hunted for consumption.

The CCC rescues orphan chimpanzees to rehabilitate them in social groups with the aim to release them back into the wild when they are ready. It is a long process which can take more than 10 years. At the CCC, the young chimpanzees go on daily walks in the forest, so they can learn how to behave, what to eat, how to use tools, how to make nests and about the dangers of the forest. There are curently 2 groups of young chimpanzees (15 aged between 2 to 7-8 years old and 8 aged between 2 to 6 years old) which are under this process of rehabilitation.

Kenda, one of the CCC keepers, and juveniles during a walk in the forest

Paco eating wild fruits 

When they are old enough (around 9 years old), they do not go on walks but stay in a large enclosure where they are provisioned daily but can also forage on wild foods. During this phase, they build stronger social bounds with one another and wean themselves of human contact.

On the 27th of June 2008, 12 chimps were released (6 males and 6 females). The females were equiped with VHF collars and males with VHF/Argos collars which allows the CCC team to follow them at a distance. We will tell you more about this release in another posting!

Albert and Rappa, 2 released males, grooming each other (February 2009)

The CCC has also an education program. The sanctuary is too remote and the road is too bad to allow local people to readily come and visit, especially during rainy season months (July-October). So our education team visits villages in the Park and big towns surrounding the Park. We started our program in 2004 with a few means but it had grown over the years. This year, we managed to visit many villages and the program is ongoing and has been well received thanks to the great energy of our local educator assisted by expatriate volunteers.

Ibro, our local educator, in a small school during a session with kids

Albert, keeper, sometimes helps with the education program. Here in a tiny village with children

4 responses so far