topic: Chimpanzees

topic: Chimpanzees

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Setback for Guinea mine that threatens World Heritage chimp reserve
- Liberian President Joseph Boakai is backing U.K.-Indian firm ArcelorMittal over access to a key railway in northern Liberia.
- U.S. firm HPX wants to use the rail line to ship ore from its own project in neighboring Guinea to the Liberian port at Buchanan.
- HPX’s plan to mine ore from Guinea’s Nimba Mountains has encountered fierce opposition from some environmentalists, who say it would imperil the area’s tool-using chimpanzees.
- HPX has said it will partner with South Africa’s Guma Group to build a new railway in Liberia that runs parallel to the existing one, but the plans are reportedly in jeopardy over financing.

Chimps are lifelong learners, study on tool use shows
- A recent study assessed wild chimpanzees’ use of sticks as a tool, monitoring how chimps of different ages gripped and manipulated the implement to retrieve food from tricky places.
- The study found that older chimps were more adept at choosing the right grip for the task at hand, indicating that chimpanzees, like humans, refine tool-use skills well into adulthood.
- The researchers say this continued development of skills is critical for chimpanzees’ survival in a changing climate, and that it highlights the importance of conservation interventions aimed at supporting the preservation of chimpanzee cultures.

Jane Goodall at 90: On fame, hope, and empathy
- Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday is today, April 3, 2024. To mark the occasion, Goodall sat down with Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler at his home in California.
- In the conversation, Goodall delves into the evolving consciousness regarding environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity, while stressing the importance of fostering hope amidst the doom and gloom often associated with these issues.
- “I’ve come to think of humanity as being at the mouth of a very long very dark tunnel and right at the end there’s a little star shining. And that’s hope,” she said. “However, it’s futile to just sit and wonder when that star will come to us. We must gird our loins, roll up our sleeves, and navigate around all obstacles that lie between us and the star.”
- The conversation also touches upon the transformative power of youth engagement in environmental activism. Goodall highlights the influence young people can have on older generations, emphasizing the importance of voting in elections as a means to support candidates who prioritize environmental concerns.

No joking: Great apes can be silly and playfully tease each other, finds study
- Cracking a good joke is no laughing matter, but the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor have so far been studied mostly in humans, with our great ape cousins going largely overlooked.
- Now, a new study reports playful teasing behavior — a precursor to joking — in small groups of chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.
- The study is the first to define playful teasing as a distinct behavior separate from play in great apes and describe its various forms.
- The findings suggest that the cognitive requirements for joking and playful teasing evolved at least 13 million years ago in ancestors common to humans and great apes.

Male dominance isn’t the default in primate societies, new study shows
- A recent study challenges the notion that it’s a man’s world when it comes to primate social groups.
- The study found that while a majority of species (58%) exhibited male-biased power structures, female- or co-dominant structures were identified in every major primate group.
- The pattern held true for apes as well; all five gibbon species studied were classified as non-male-dominant, as were bonobos among the great apes.
- Experts say that long-held beliefs in male power as the default among primates could have developed due to chance (the earliest studied primate species happen to have male-dominant structures), or due to “who’s been doing the research and publishing.”

Bees bring honey and hope to a forest reserve in Nigeria
- Nigeria’s Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve boasts more plant species than any other montane forest in Nigeria.
- The reserve is also home to a small population of endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- However, human pressures have resulted in deforestation of portions of Ngel Nyaki.
- An initiative hopes to safeguard and rehabilitate Ngel Nyaki’s habitat by training community members in beekeeping.

A rush for ‘green’ iron is on in Guinea. Will chimpanzees be a casualty?
- In December, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced plans to sink $6.2 billion into a long-delayed iron ore mine in Guinea’s Simandou mountain range.
- Simandou contains the largest undeveloped high-grade iron deposits on earth, certain to be in high demand due to their suitability for low-emissions steel production.
- In the nearby Nimba mountains, another major iron deposit is moving closer to production, as a World Bank-backed project run by a subsidiary of HPX moves forward with feasibility studies.
- Both the Simandou and Nimba mountain ranges are home to critically endangered western chimpanzees, and conservationists say that mining operations there could pose a major threat to them.

Bonobos and chimps recall friends and family even after years apart: Study
- An experiment with bonobos and chimpanzees suggests the great apes remember their friends and family even after years apart.
- Louise, a bonobo who participated in the study, recognized a sister she had last seen 26 years ago, in what is now evidence of the “longest-lasting nonhuman social memory” on the scientific record.
- Laura Simone Lewis and her colleagues designed an experiment to track eye movement (used as an indicator of recognition) when the animals were faced with two photos side by side — one of a former group mate and the other of a stranger from their species.
- The team found that the kind of relationship shared by two individuals also influences recognition; if they had a more positive relationship as group mates, the bonobo or chimp directed more attention to that individual.

Poverty and plantations: Nigerian reserve struggles against the odds
- Located in southern Nigeria, Oluwa Forest Reserve is supposed to be a bastion for the region’s wildlife – which includes critically endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But the influx of thousands of settlers into the reserve is coming at the cost of its rainforests, with satellite data and imagery showing ongoing clearing into primary forest.
- Palm oil companies are also establishing industrial plantations in the reserve.
- Conservationists and officials warn that vulnerable wildlife populations may be wiped out if forest loss and bushmeat hunting continues at its current rate.

Are flame retardants about to burn a hole in biodiversity? (commentary)
- Researchers recently mapped more than 150 species of wild animals across every continent contaminated with flame retardant chemicals.
- These chemicals are added to furniture, electronics and vehicles but routinely escape such products and are found in the blood of wildlife species such as baboons, chimpanzees, and red colobus monkeys with unknown effects, but in humans these exposures are associated with lower IQs, reduced fertility, and an elevated risk of cancer.
- “Even though we lack data on flame retardants in wildlife from most tropical areas with high levels of biodiversity, the findings from Uganda strongly suggest that wildlife in other tropical ecosystems are probably affected as well,” a new op-ed states in arguing for a rapid reduction in their use.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Poverty-fueled deforestation of Nigerian reserve slashes hope for rare chimps
- Less than 20 year ago, Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve was regarded as a potential conservation site for endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- But between 2001 and 2022, the reserve lost nearly half of its old growth forest cover, a trend that shows no sign of stopping.
- Akure-Ofosu’s forest is being lost due to the proliferation small-scale farms within the reserve.
- Facing an unemployment rate surpassing 50% and a soaring level of poverty, many Nigerians have few options other than to settle in the country’s protected areas and hew farms from forest.

Ground-nesting chimps hold lessons for conservation — and for human evolution
- Eastern chimpanzees in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo frequently build nests and sleep overnight on the ground even in areas where predators are present, a recent study finds.
- The ability of these relatively small-bodied apes to sleep on the ground without fire or fortifications suggests that other hominids, including early humans, could have moved from the safety of trees earlier than thought.
- The study also found that chimpanzees were not deterred from ground nesting when they shared space with humans — as long as those humans were not hunting.
- This, the researchers say, suggests chimpanzee conservation and human use of forests can coexist.

Guinea’s crab-fishing chimps are in good health, study shows, but threats loom
- An international team has used genetic censusing — analyzing DNA from fecal samples — to work out the size of a population of critically endangered chimpanzees in Guinea.
- At least 136 adult chimpanzees were identified living in four communities on the western flanks of Guinea’s Nimba Mountains, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Iron ore mining is planned in a northern section of the mountains, in an area the chimpanzees use to disperse between their separate communities.
- The scientists warn that human activities that hinder or restrict chimpanzee movements or territories can trigger deadly battles between rival communities of the apes and compromise their genetic diversity.

Chimpanzee nut cracking leaves telltale marks on stones, providing clues to human evolution
- Groups of chimpanzees in West Africa use stone tools in distinctly different ways to crack open nuts.
- Researchers used 3D scans to trace wear patterns on the tools, called “hammerstones” and “anvils.”
- The different tool uses may help archaeologists identify signs of early stone tool technology in human ancestors more than 3 million years ago.

Study highlights ‘friends with benefits’ relation between gorillas and chimps
- A new long-term study points to lasting social relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild.
- The study showed that individuals from both species actively seek out each other in a variety of contexts.
- The benefits of these interactions go beyond protection from predators, and include learning social skills and finding fruiting trees.
- But these social interactions also provide the potential for transmission of deadly diseases like Ebola, which pose as big a threat to the long-term survival of gorillas and chimps as hunting and habitat destruction.

Easygoing bonobos accepting of outsiders, study says
- Bonobos are well known for their peaceable relations within family groups, but there’s less scientific consensus about how much tolerance they extend to individuals outside of their core groups.
- A recent study set out to examine this question by observing members of habituated bonobo communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and comparing their behavior to observations of chimpanzee groups in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
- The researchers found that, compared to chimpanzees, bonobos maintain strong and distinct core groups, but also exhibit frequent and peaceable between-group interactions.
- The findings give conservationists a better understanding of bonobo social behavior, which in turn can inform conservation actions.

Thai zoos come under scrutiny again as tourism rebounds from COVID-19
- The welfare of rare and often threatened species in Thailand’s tourism and pet trades has long been a concern for animal rights activists.
- The conditions in which many of the animals are kept became even direr during the COVID-19 pandemic, when border shutdowns meant no visitor revenue to care for the animals.
- NGOs are working to rescue and rehabilitate some of the animals from zoos and private owners, but acknowledge that few, if any, of the animals can ever be released back into the wild.
- They add that rescue and rehabilitation is only part of the solution, and that more focus should go on protecting the natural environment and habitats of these animals over the long term.

Trafficked: Kidnapped chimps, jailed rhino horn traffickers, and seized donkey parts
- Armed intruders who kidnapped three young chimpanzees from a sanctuary in the DRC have threatened to kill them unless a ransom is paid for the apes’ return.
- Calls for renewed focus on organized crime in wildlife trafficking, as specialized courts in Uganda and the DRC are delivering convictions for wildlife crimes that in the past would likely have gone unpunished.
- A seizure in Nigeria has sounded the latest alarm over growing exports of donkey parts for traditional Chinese medicine.
- Trafficked is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the illegal wildlife trade in Africa.

Chimps digging wells shows learned behavior that may help amid climate change
- A recent study using camera traps and direct observation documented well-digging behavior in a group of chimpanzees in Uganda, initiated by a female that had immigrated into the group.
- Researchers were surprised to observe this behavior in this rainforest-dwelling population as water tends to be easily accessible in this habitat.
- The findings suggest this learned behavior may be helpful for the conservation of this group, as the chimps have picked up an adaptive measure that could help them survive a drought.

Inside Sierra Leone’s Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (video)
- The Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located on the outskirts of Freetown, is a refuge for orphaned chimpanzees in Sierra Leone.
- Part of a network of sanctuaries in West Africa, Tacugama provides a home for orphaned western chimpanzees, which are critically endangered.
- Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo visited Tacugama in April and sat down with Bala Amarasekaran, the sanctuary’s founder.

Data from droppings: Researchers draw up a genetic ID map for chimps
- As part of a broader project studying the cultural and genetic diversity of chimpanzees across Africa, researchers have used fecal samples from 48 sites across the continent to create a genetic identity data set of chimpanzees across the species’ range.
- The data set supports the division of chimpanzees into the four currently recognized subspecies, as well as shedding light on historic gene flow between subspecies and between chimpanzees and bonobos.
- The data set can help conservationists determine the genetic origin of chimpanzees confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade and identify poaching hotspots, researchers say.

Côte d’Ivoire’s chimp habitats are shrinking, but there’s hope in their numbers
- Despite a decade of uncontrolled poaching, researchers have found what they describe as a “healthy” population of 200 chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Comoé National Park.
- With the help of camera-trap footage, researchers found that the Comoé chimps display unique types of behaviors not found in other chimp populations in West Africa.
- Like elsewhere in West Africa, the chimps’ habitat remains under pressure from farming and herding.

Deforestation on the rise as poverty soars in Nigeria
- Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve was established to help protect what is now one of largest remaining tracts of rainforest in Nigeria, and is home to many species.
- But fire and logging is rampant in the reserve, with satellite data showing it lost 44% of its primary forest cover in just two decades; preliminary data indicate deforestation may be increasing further in 2022.
- Sources say poverty is the driving force behind the deforestation of Akure-Ofosu and other protected areas in Nigeria.
- According to the World Bank, 4 in 10 Nigerians – about 80 million people – were living below in poverty in 2019, with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing another 5 million people below the poverty line by 2022.

Civil conflict in Cameroon puts endangered chimpanzees in the crosshairs
- Declared a national park in 2009, Mount Cameroon hosts an array of biodiversity, including endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees.
- Efforts to protect the area have been complicated by an armed conflict, the Anglophone crisis, that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and pushed both refugees and armed combatants into the area’s forests.
- The conflict compounds existing conservation challenges including population pressure, land clearing and conversion, demand for bushmeat, and weak law enforcement.

In Nigeria, a decade of payoffs boosted global wildlife trafficking hub
- An investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times and Mongabay has found evidence of systematic failure by Nigerian law enforcement and the judicial system to hold wildlife poachers and traffickers accountable.
- Our analysis of official wildlife crimes data, supported by numerous interviews with prosecutors, environmental campaigners and traders at wildlife markets in Lagos, Cross River, Abuja, Ogun and Bauchi states, found a near-total reliance on minor out-of-court settlements in trafficking cases.
- Despite numerous high-profile, multimillion-dollar trafficking busts at Nigeria’s ports since 2010, no one has faced jail terms as a result.
- The reliance on informal payments to local officials encourages corruption, experts say, while sporadic crackdowns on wildlife markets have not stopped traders operating in the country’s commercial capital.

Refuge of endangered ‘African unicorn’ threatened by mining, poaching, deforestation
- Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) shelters some 470 mammal and bird species, including up to 20% of the world’s remaining endangered okapi (Okapia johnstoni), which are related to giraffes.
- While Okapi Wildlife Reserve has escaped much of the environmental destruction affecting surrounding areas, satellite data show deforestation has been increasing in the reserve in recent years.
- Satellite imagery shows the expansion of what appear to be gold mines in the latter half of 2021.
- Conservationists say illegal mining is attracting more people to the reserve, which in turn increases poaching and deforestation.

The chimp doctor will see you now: Medicating apes boost the case for conservation
- Researchers in Gabon’s Loango National Park observed chimps applying insects to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of other individuals.
- Researchers identified 76 instances of this behavior being repeated on 22 different chimps.
- Experts say these findings could help guide conservation efforts for not just these endangered great apes, but also their entire ecosystem.

Endangered chimps ‘on the brink’ as Nigerian reserve is razed for agriculture, timber
- As rainforest throughout much of the country has disappeared, Nigeria’s Oluwa Forest Reserve has been a sanctuary for many species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees – the rarest chimpanzee subspecies.
- But Oluwa itself has come under increasing deforestation pressure in recent years, losing 14% of its remaining primary forest between 2002 and 2020.
- Oluwa’s deforestation rate appears to be increasing, with several large areas of forest loss occurring in 2021– including in one of the last portions of the reserve known to harbor chimps.
- Agriculture and timber extraction are the main drivers of deforestation in Oluwa; smallholders looking to eke out an existence continue to move into the reserve and illegally clear forest and hunt animals for bushmeat, while plantation companies are staking claims to government-granted concessions.

Think that GIF of the smoking chimp is funny? The chimp wasn’t laughing
- While a GIF of an ape engaging in “human” behavior may seem cute, the animals used to create such images were often subjected to abuse.
- Experts also say such images can perpetuate the myth that apes make good pets, fueling the international trade in these endangered animals.
- Campaigners have successfully convinced major stock photography agencies to stop providing images of apes in unnatural situations, but popular GIF agencies still do not have specific policies against such images.

In rural Nigeria, the magic of cinema builds support for ape conservation
- Since 2006, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has worked with local groups to screen documentaries about apes in dozens of communities adjoining protected areas where Cross River gorillas are still found.
- The films aim to build knowledge about apes and support for conservation; conservationists say film screenings, which are still a novelty in rural areas, attract a broader audience than radio shows, town hall meetings or other outreach methods.
- Though they live close to ape habitats, for many people in these rural communities, films are as close as they will come to encountering the rare and cryptic animals that live nearby.

Outgunned by militants, rangers fear for chimpanzees in southwest Mali
- Armed Islamist militants have taken over Bafing Faunal Reserve and surrounding areas of southwestern Mali, forcing park rangers and many residents to flee.
- Forestry officials and police say the militants and wildlife traffickers are killing chimpanzees and other wildlife with impunity within the reserve.
- Just 17% of western chimpanzees live in protected areas, and the insecurity in southwestern Mali threatens these endangered animals in one of the few places they should be safe.

In Guinea, an illegal $6b gold ‘bonanza’ threatens endangered chimpanzees
- Earlier this year, Australia’s Predictive Discovery announced that it had found more than $6 billion in “bonanza”-grade gold deposits in eastern Guinea.
- A Mongabay investigation has found that the company’s exploration is taking place inside the boundaries of Haut Niger National Park, in violation of the law establishing the park.
- The park is home to an estimated 500 western chimpanzees, one of the highest concentrations of the critically endangered primate in West Africa.

Scientists look to chimps’ past to gauge their future under climate change
- In a new study, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees rode out periods of global change over the past 120,000 years, revealing insights into how they might be affected by future climate change.
- The team identified important long-term, resilient chimpanzee habitat in the Upper and Lower Guinean forests of West and Central Africa, and the Albertine Rift in East Africa that had been previously overlooked.
- The authors stress the vital role of understanding the past in predicting how future climate changes will affect wildlife abundance and distribution.

For male chimps looking to mate, an entourage is the way to go, study finds
- A recent study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park found that males who create strong ties to alpha males, or who form large networks or alliances with other males, were more likely to father offspring.
- Researchers say the social bonds formed between males provided access to mating opportunities which they would not have been able to access without allies.
- While further studies are necessary, experts say the findings could help understand optimal group sizes and thus the necessary range for wild populations.

For Africa’s great apes, even ‘best-case’ climate change will decimate habitat
- Africa’s great apes stand to lose up to 94% of their current suitable habitat by 2050 if humanity makes no effort to slow greenhouse gas emissions, a new study warns.
- Even under the “best-case” scenario, in which global warming can be slowed, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos would still lose 85% of their range.
- The apes’ habitat is under pressure from human encroachment, clearing of wild areas, and climate change impacts that are rendering existing habitats no longer suitable.
- Researchers say there’s a possibility of “range gain,” where climate change makes currently unsuitable areas habitable for the apes, but warn it could take the slow-adapting animals thousands of years to make the move — much slower than the rate at which their current habitat is being lost.

Not all rescued animals should be released back to the wild (commentary)
- Articles about animals released from captivity (or rehabilitation after injury) get clicks, likes and lots of shares, and it would be easy to assume that doing this is the top job for all wildlife sanctuaries.
- As appealing as this image is, sanctuaries must first determine what is in the best interest of the animal, like whether it can survive where it’s being released.
- How do they determine which animals should be returned to the wild, and which should remain at the sanctuary? It’s complicated, but sometimes the best move is to keep an animal in captivity.
- This article is a commentary, and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Caring for those ‘just like us’: Q&A with vet and great ape advocate Rick Quinn
- Veterinarian Rick Quinn is the founder of Docs4GreatApes, a charitable organization that supports health care for great apes while also helping the communities surrounding them and the environment they share.
- His new book, with an introduction by Jane Goodall, chronicles the lessons he learned about ape conservation in Africa and Asia, accompanied by his own photos of gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and orangutans; all proceeds go back into supporting his foundation’s work.
- He emphasizes the importance of community well-being and empowerment as part of effective conservation, pointing to initiatives where building trust and creating goodwill led to communities becoming willing partners in gorilla conservation.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Quinn discusses his new book, his discomfort with the kind of selfie tourism that puts great apes at potential risk, the COVID-19 pandemic, and his role as an activist veterinarian.

Total’s East African oil pipeline to go ahead despite stiff opposition
- The $3.5 billion heated oil pipeline will connect oil fields in the Lake Albert basin in western Uganda to the port of Tanga on the Tanzanian coast.
- Developed by French oil major Total and Chinese state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the project has faced staunch opposition from environmentalists who point out that it cuts through some of East Africa’s most biodiversity-rich areas.
- The path of the pipeline will impact almost 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of protected areas, a quarter of that the habitat of eastern chimpanzees and African savanna elephants, and displace more than 12,000 families.
- Three agreements signed this month will now have to be ratified by the parliaments in Uganda and Tanzania, with construction expected to start in July and the first oil exports anticipated in 2025.

Conservation must be primary goal of great ape tourism, despite COVID-driven recessions (commentary)
- The months-long closure of national parks and continued travel restrictions due to COVID-19 has disrupted a critical revenue source for great ape conservation: sustainable tourism.
- Countries which rely on tourism as a significant source of their GDP must continue to place biodiversity principles at the heart of recovery efforts, and explore alternative livelihood options for local communities.
- Where great ape tourism is concerned, conservation must always be the primary goal of any endeavor.
- This article is a commentary, the views expressed are not necessarily those of Mongabay.

What makes chimps unique? Candid Animal Cam meets our close relatives
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

In Uganda, safeguarding chimpanzees against the scourge of snaring
- Frequent patrols in Uganda’s Kibale National Park are credited with helping reduce the risk of the resident chimpanzees falling victim to the snare traps set by poachers targeting bushmeat.
- While chimpanzees aren’t typically eaten here as bushmeat, the indiscriminate nature of the traps means they still risk being killed or severely maimed.
- A booming human population on the periphery of the park is putting pressure on the wildlife inside, with hunters not just targeting small game for bushmeat, but also forest elephants for ivory.
- The frequency at which chimps get snared here has gone down from one incident every nine months, to once in 15 months, with rangers finding and removing about 45 snare traps a month.

Podcast: Great ape ‘forest gardeners of Africa’ benefit from conservation victory
- Great ape conservation in Africa relies on forest protection, and vice versa.
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a look at two stories that illustrate how conservation of Africa’s Great Apes — chimpanzees and gorillas — often goes hand in hand with forest conservation efforts.
- We welcome to the program Ekwoge Abwe, head of the Ebo Forest Research Project in Cameroon. Abwe tells us the story of how he became the first scientist to discover Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees using tools to crack open nuts and discusses ongoing efforts to safeguard Ebo Forest against the threats of oil palm expansion and logging.
- We also speak with Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an associate researcher at Cambridge University who shares how chimpanzees were among the seed-dispersing species that helped central Africa’s rainforests regenerate after they collapsed some 2,500 years ago.

A mysterious heart bone in chimps points to cardiac disease
- Chimpanzees and other great apes are widely afflicted by heart disease; three-quarters of chimps that die in captivity have been found to suffer from heart disease, and up to 90% of captive chimps could have it.
- Using high-resolution 3D imaging, a team of researchers discovered that some chimp hearts contain a tiny bone known as an os cordis.
- Researchers do not yet know how, or why, the bone forms in chimps, but it appears to be more prevalent in those with heart disease.
- Researchers hope this finding will help conservationists keep captive chimps healthy, and increase broader knowledge of chimpanzee pathology.

A genetic map hopes to trace rescued chimps back to their homes
- There are four recognized chimpanzee subspecies, each with a distinct range and unique genetic makeup
- When chimpanzees are rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, it can be almost impossible for conservationists to identify where a chimpanzee originally came from.
- Scientists are working to create a genetic reference map for chimpanzees, with the aim of enabling conservationists and law enforcement to pinpoint a chimpanzee’s place of origin and identify poaching hotspots.

More than 500 dams planned inside protected areas: Study
- More than 500 dams are either under construction or planned within protected areas over the next two decades, according to a new study.
- The study found that more than 1,200 large dams already exist within protected areas.
- The authors strongly encourage governments to avoid constructing dams in or near protected areas and instead to look toward renewable energies such as wind and solar.
- The researchers express concerns about ongoing rollbacks to environmental protections, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Facial recognition tech for chimps looks to bust online ape trafficking
- Much of the illegal trade in apes now takes place online, with traffickers posting pictures of baby animals for sale.
- ChimpFace, a newly developed software, uses an algorithm to determine if chimpanzee faces in images posted by traffickers match up with images later posted to social media accounts.
- Its creators hope the matches the program turns up will aid Interpol or local law enforcement in tracking and prosecuting people illegally buying and selling wildlife.

For tool-wielding chimps of Ebo Forest, logging plan is a ‘death sentence’
- Ebo Forest is the largest intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon, spanning more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres), and providing refuge to a multitude of rare species, including Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, drills, and a tiny and enigmatic population of western gorillas.
- The Cameroon government recently approved a logging concession for Ebo Forest, which would allow trees in 68,385 hectares (169,000 acres) of the region to be harvested, despite opposition from conservationists and local communities.
- Ebo Forest was previously slated to be transformed into a national park, an effort spearheaded by WWF, but plans were dashed in 2013, reportedly because of lack of funding.
- Conservationists worry that logging, and any concomitant activities, such as illegal forest destruction and poaching, will place considerable pressure on endangered and critically endangered species, and that the biodiversity of the forest would be compromised.

10-year plan hopes to give western chimpanzees a fighting chance
- The IUCN recently released its latest 10-year action plan for the critically endangered western chimpanzee.
- Poaching, habitat loss and disease were identified as the key threats to the species.
- These threats were found to be exacerbated by the high rate of population growth in West Africa, resulting in rapid agricultural expansion and a demand for economic development projects.
- The IUCN plan sets out nine strategies to be implemented between 2020 and 2030; they include filling research gaps, ensuring chimpanzees are considered in land use planning, improving legal protection, and raising awareness of the plight of western chimpanzees.

Podcast: Animals have culture, too, and for some it’s crucial to their survival and conservation
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we explore animal culture and social learning with author Carl Safina and whale researcher Hal Whitehead.
- Carl Safina examines the capacity of several animal species for social learning and transmitting knowledge across generations in his new book, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. Safina appears on the Mongabay Newscast today to explain how sperm whales, scarlet macaws, and chimpanzees are equipped to live in the world they live in as much by what they learn from other individuals in their social groups as by their genetic inheritance.
- Hal Whitehead, a professor at Canada’s Dalhousie University, was one of the first scientists to examine the complex social lives of sperm whales and the distinctive calls known as codas that they use to establish their group and personal identities. He appears on the podcast today to play us some recordings of sperm whale codas and tell us about sperm whale culture and social learning.

Chimps prefer human crops, scientists find — and it’s better for them
- Entering agricultural areas to eat crops puts chimps at risk of injury or death, but a growing body of research suggests that the nutritional benefits of cultivated food keep chimps coming back.
- In a recent paper, a team of researchers carefully studied the diets of chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea, an area where their natural habitat has been partially cleared for farming.
- They found that the crops eaten by chimpanzees were better sources of basic nutrition than available wild foods.
- The research also indicated that chimpanzees’ foraging preferences are highly specific — troops in different areas preferred different crops — indicating that any mitigation efforts must be informed by the realities of both humans and non-human apes sharing a particular landscape.

Mystery ailments, asymptomatic individuals: Spotlight on monkeypox in chimps
- In 2017 and 2018, monkeypox viral outbreaks struck three chimpanzee communities in Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire.
- Researchers investigating the outbreaks found that very few individuals actually showed the characteristic smallpox-like skin rashes on their bodies associated with monkeypox; many chimps that only exhibited respiratory symptoms like coughing with few or no rashes also had high viral loads of monkeypox virus DNA in their feces.
- Detecting monkeypox viral DNA in individuals with only respiratory symptoms suggests that the same might be true in humans, researchers say, which could mean that monkeypox cases could be going undiagnosed.
- This study is the first-of-its kind deep dive into monkeypox virus transmission among wild primates.

For the western chimpanzee, sanctuaries are more than just a last resort
- West Africa’s chimpanzee population has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, falling from an estimated 1 million to fewer than 300,000 today.
- Across West Africa, a network of sanctuaries is working to provide shelter for chimpanzees rescued from traffickers.
- Members of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance say their work goes beyond simply caring for individual apes, extending to protecting wild chimpanzee populations and supporting the people who share their habitats.

Takeover of Nigerian reserve highlights uphill battle to save forests
- Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve in southwestern Nigeria, home to rare primates and valuable timber trees, has some of the highest deforestation rates in the country.
- Logging is ostensibly prohibited, but sawmills thrive here, while farmers who clear land inside the reserve often have their actions legitimized by the authorities.
- Researchers say poverty and a lack of jobs are at the root of the problem, with communities compelled to farm, log and hunt in the absence of other forms of livelihoods.
- With Nigeria’s forest reserves among the few areas left unfarmed, population pressure threatens to drive an influx of newcomers from all around the country into these reserve areas in the competition for arable land.

A tale of two Nigerian reserves underscores importance of community
- Differing levels of deforestation in two neighboring forest reserves in Nigeria, Ekenwan and Gele-Gele, have highlighted the importance of a community-led conservation approach.
- The Ekenwan reserve is managed by the government, but illegal activities such as farming, logging and hunting are rampant.
- In Gele-Gele, local communities working with NGOs and funded by an oil company are in charge of ensuring sustainable forest use and wildlife protection, resulting in a much lower rate of deforestation.
- However, community leaders say they’re under-resourced to tackle incursions by outsiders, while some community members complain they haven’t seen the benefits of the conservation program.

Nigeria declares new conservation zone for most threatened chimpanzee
- The government of Nigeria’s Ekiti state has issued an executive order establishing a conservation area within the Ise Forest Reserve, where about 20 Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees are believed to survive.
- With perhaps as few as 3,500 left in the wild, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee faces threats including hunting, logging and forest clearing for agriculture across its range.
- Upgrading the reserve to a conservation area will put stricter forest-protection measures in place.
- Before doing so, conservationists say they will work to gain the consent and support of forest-dependent communities in the area.

Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
- A new study presents evidence of territoriality among western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo.
- Camera trap images revealed that groups avoided one another and also stayed away from the central area of each other’s home ranges — evidence that the species may be more territorial than previously thought.
- An estimated 80% of western lowland gorillas live outside of protected areas, where shrinking territory due to forest loss and habitat fragmentation is a big problem.
- This new information on their territoriality, combined with their shrinking habitat, means gorillas may experience increased competition for food as well as for the limited space.

Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
- A census of one of the two populations of mountain gorillas living in eastern Africa revealed an increase from 400 to at least 459 individuals, bringing the total count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas.
- Teams conducted the survey in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem straddling the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
- An earlier survey of the other population living in the Virunga Mountains of DRC, Uganda and Rwanda showed that gorilla numbers there are also on the rise.
- That led to a change in the subspecies status on the IUCN Red List from critically endangered to endangered.

Bonobo conservation stymied by deforestation, human rights abuses
- The bonobo is a relative of the chimpanzee, and is found only in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) south of the Congo River. They are endangered, with habitat loss and the bushmeat trade their primary threats. The Sankuru Nature Reserve is the DRC’s largest nature reserve that is focused on bonobo conservation. However, deforestation rates have only increased in Sankuru since it was created in 2007. Meanwhile nearby Lomami National Park is experiencing almost no deforestation.
- Researchers attribute the disparity in deforestation rates between Sankuru Nature Reserve and Lomami National Park to the lack of human settlements and clearer managerial strategy in the latter. They claim that Sankuru lacked buy-in from the local communities, and that conflicting land claims made conservation efforts more difficult to achieve.
- However, there may be a dark side to Lomami’s success. Sources claim that the military, which is tasked with protecting DRC’s national parks, have engaged in torture of people suspected of poaching. There are also reports that a community within Lomami was displaced without proper consultation or a suitable alternative location.
- Researchers say that to ensure effective engagement, indigenous forest-dwelling communities should be granted proper security of tenure over their lands, and community-managed forests should be set up and funded around the perimeter of the park.

‘We have cut them all’: Ghana struggles to protect its last old-growth forests
- Deforestation of Ghana’s primary forests jumped 60 percent between 2017 and 2018 – the biggest jump of any tropical country. Most of this occurred in the country’s protected areas, including its forest reserves.
- A Mongabay investigation revealed that illegal logging in forest reserves is commonplace, with sources claiming officers from Ghana’s Forestry Commission often turn a blind eye and even participate in the activity.
- The technical director of forestry at Ghana’s Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources said attempts at intervention have met with limited success, and are often thwarted by loggers who know how to game the system.
- A representative of a conservation NGO operating in the country says a community-based monitoring project has helped curtail illegal logging in some reserves, but additional buy-in from other communities is needed to scale up its results. Meanwhile, the Ghanaian government is reportedly starting its own public outreach program, as well as coordinating with the EU on an agreement that would allow only legal wood from Ghana to enter the EU market.

Cocoa and gunshots: The struggle to save a threatened forest in Nigeria
- Nigeria’s Omo Forest Reserve provides important habitat for animals such as forest elephants, as well as drinking water for the city of Lagos.
- But the reserve has been severely deforested, losing more than 7 percent of its tree cover over the past two decades. Satellite data indicate 2019 may be a particularly bad year for the reserve’s remaining primary forest.
- The primary cause of deforestation in Omo is cocoa farming. Seeking fertile soil and a respite from poverty, the reserve has attracted thousands of small farmers. They’re living in the reserve illegally, but the government is hesitant to evict them as doing so would disrupt their livelihoods and require a significant amount of funding.
- Instead, the focus is on preventing more farmers from invading Omo. This is the goal of rangers who patrol Omo’s remaining forests looking for footprints and listening for chainsaws and gunshots. While they’ve been successful at preventing some encroachment, the reserve is too big for the relatively small team to effectively monitor in its entirety.

Primates lose ground to surging commodity production in their habitats
- “Forest risk” commodities, such as beef, palm oil, and fossil fuels, led to a significant proportion of the 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles) of forest that was cleared between 2001 and 2017 — an area almost the size of Mexico.
- A previous study found that 60 percent of primates face extinction and 75 percent of species’ numbers are declining.
- The authors say that addressing the loss of primate habitat due to the production of commodities is possible, though it will require a global effort to “green” the international trade in these commodities.

In a first, chimps found bashing tortoises against trees to get at the meat
- For the first time, researchers have observed chimpanzees in Gabon vigorously smashing forest hinge-back tortoises against tree trunks to try and crack open their shells and extract meat out of them.
- It was usually adult male chimps that were successful at cracking open tortoise shells. One female and two adolescents were seen trying too, but they were unsuccessful, following which an adult male finished the job, sharing the meat with them.
- In an unexpected observation, a adult male chimp cracked open a tortoise, ate half of its meat, then stored the remainder in a tree fork. He came back for it the next day, suggesting that chimpanzees plan for the future.

What is magic without ape parts? Inside the illicit trade devastating Nigeria’s apes
- Beliefs regarding the spiritual powers of apes drive a thriving trade in ape body parts in Nigeria and beyond.
- In many cultures within Nigeria, chimpanzee and gorilla parts are believed to provide protection from evil spirits and curses, or allow communication with ancestors.
- Due to a lack of data, the trade in ape body parts is sometimes viewed as simply a by-product of the much larger trade in bushmeat. Mongabay’s reporting suggests that the body part trade is, in its own right, a complex, well-organized and far more lucrative business.

Bauxite mining and Chinese dam push Guinea’s chimpanzees to the brink
- Guinea is home to about half of the world’s critically endangered western chimpanzees.
- A bauxite mining boom is driving the chimpanzees from their habitats in Guinea’s Boké region. To compensate, two mining firms agreed in 2017 to fund the establishment of Moyen-Bafing National Park, home to an estimated 5,300 chimpanzees.
- The national park is itself threatened by a bauxite mine and a proposed hydroelectric dam — projects that could kill as many as 2,800 of the great apes.

Audio: Tool-using, ground-nesting chimp culture discovered in DR Congo
- On today’s episode, we talk to primatologist Cleve Hicks, who recently led a research team that discovered a new tool-using chimp culture in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Hicks and team spent 12 years documenting the behaviors of a group of chimps in the Bili-Uéré region of northern DRC, and their findings include an entirely new chimpanzee tool kit featuring four different kinds of tools. The chimps also build ground nests, which is highly unusual for any group of chimps — but especially for chimps living around dangerous predators like lions and leopards.
- And the Eastern chimps’ novel use of tools and ground nesting aren’t even the most interesting behavioral quirks they displayed, Hicks says.

Wildlife conservation strategies must take animals’ social lives into account: Researchers
- In a paper published in Science last month, an international team of researchers argues that the growing body of evidence on the importance of social learning and animal cultures must be taken more fully into account in order to improve wildlife conservation efforts.
- “Animal culture” consists of information and behaviors shared amongst members of a wildlife community, such as a flock of migratory birds, a herd of elephants, or a pod of whales. For whooping cranes to retain knowledge of migration routes across generations, for instance, this knowledge must be passed between members of the flock through what scientists call “social learning.”
- Despite the mounting evidence of the far-reaching implications of social learning for the preservation of wildlife, however, international policy forums that devise large-scale conservation strategies “have so far not engaged substantially with the challenges and opportunities presented by this new scientific perspective,” the researchers note.

In the Congo Basin, a road cuts through once-untouched ape wilderness
- The TRIDOM landscape, encompassing forests in Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo, is home to more than 40,000 great apes as well as Central Africa’s largest elephant population.
- TRIDOM is in the path of a planned road link between Cameroon and Congo. Associated projects include a hydropower dam.
- While the project’s environmental impact assessment estimated only 750 hectares (1,850 acres) of woodland would be cleared for the road, on-the-ground observation of work in progress indicates the impact will be much greater.
- In addition to the direct impact of forest clearing, conservationists fear the road will increase habitat fragmentation, facilitate hunting and mining, and encourage human migration into the area — something that is already happening.

For the famed chimps of Gombe, human encroachment takes a toll
- The chimpanzee population in Gombe National Park in Tanzania has declined significantly in recent years.
- Among other factors, loss of suitable habitats due to charcoal production and smallholder agriculture has contributed to this drop.
- The Jane Goodall Institute, domiciled in Gombe, is now working with the communities living near the park to address these issues.

Research into chimp health benefits human, ecosystem well-being too
- Decades of research at Tanzania’s Gombe National Park have identified two major threats facing the park’s chimpanzees: habitat loss and disease.
- The two factors are linked, with human incursions into chimpanzee habitat increasing the risk of exposure to disease.
- Given the close genetic relationship between chimps and humans, diseases can flow both ways.
- Established 15 years ago, the Gombe Ecosystem Health Project aims to improve the health of chimps, humans and the wider ecosystem in the Gombe area.

Tool innovation shows cultural evolution at work among chimpanzees
- Chimpanzees in the wild have long been known to use a balled-up wad of leaves as a sponge to soak up water to drink.
- In 2011, researchers in Uganda observed chimps using a fistful of moss instead of leaves — and noted that the practice of “moss-sponging” was spreading throughout the chimp community.
- The sudden emergence and then rapid spread of this new tool leads researchers to believe that chimpanzees are capable of cultural evolution.
- Deforestation and hunting threaten chimpanzees with extinction, and may make it more difficult for cultural innovations to spread.

To tackle great ape trafficking, follow the money, report says
- Critically endangered great apes in Africa and Asia are hunted to be sold as pets, for bushmeat, or for their body parts.
- A recent study of the financial aspect of the trade in great apes reveals a complex system of multi-layered supply chains, embedded corruption, and soaring profits for those at the very top of these illicit networks.
- Money connected to ape trafficking runs through the global financial system, often across multiple jurisdictions, opening a potential avenue for legal sanctions against traders.

Cellphones are still endangering gorillas, but recycling old ones can help
- The Congo Basin, key habitat for gorillas and chimpanzees, is rich in minerals such as coltan, gold and tin that are used in electronics.
- Mining is a major factor in the decline of species like the Grauer’s gorilla, which have lost habitat to the industry and are also hunted when forest is opened up for mining.
- Participating in cellphone recycling programs helps reduce the demand for mining in gorilla habitat.

Start them young: Uganda targets children for conservation awareness
- Uganda is home to a wide variety of primates, including chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. Deforestation, hunting and rapid population growth are among the threats facing the country’s wildlife.
- Aiming to inspire future generations to protect the country’s wildlife, Uganda has made conservation education part of its national curriculum.
- Conservation education centers, which give children first-hand introductions to chimpanzees and other wildlife, are a key part of the education effort.
- The Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Center in Entebbe is the country’s busiest, receiving more than 260,000 guests each year.

A Zambian sanctuary finds caring for chimps is a lifetime commitment
- Home to more than 130 apes, Zambia’s Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage is one of the world’s oldest and largest chimpanzee sanctuaries.
- Chimpanzees can live for 50 years or more, so each new animal the center takes in will require decades of care and financial support.
- With an ever-growing number of chimps in need of a home, simply financing daily operations is a challenge for this award-winning facility.

Republic of Congo names new national park, home to gorillas, elephants
- The new Ogooué-Leketi National Park is the Republic of Congo’s fifth national park.
- It borders Batéké Plateau National Park in neighboring Gabon, and together the two parks form a transboundary protected area covering more than 5,500 square kilometers (2,120 square miles).
- The official designation of Ogooué-Leketi National Park comes after three logging concessions that overlapped with the proposed park area were finally closed down.
- All of the rights-holding communities that live close to the Ogooué-Leketi National Park were involved in the process of creating the protected area, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program.

Citizen Ape: The fight for personhood for humans’ closest relatives
- The great ape personhood movement aims to extend legal personhood to apes, a distinction that recognizes these non-human animals as beings with the capacity to hold both rights and duties
- The movement has had several notable successes in advocating for changes to laws, and in individual court verdicts freeing apes from captivity in harsh conditions.
- Proponents hope that granting apes legal rights will also help bridge the gap between humans and non-human animals, along with the greater natural world.
- The great ape personhood movement draws on both modern philosophy and on indigenous traditions that recognize apes as creatures with complex societies and rich emotional lives.

Scientists, conservationists: Give Nobel Peace Prize to Jane Goodall
- Scientists and conservationists argue that primatologist Jane Goodall should receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
- Goodall’s groundbreaking research uncovered startling revelations, including tool use by chimpanzees, that blurred the lines between humans and animals.
- Goodall, a U.N. Messenger of Peace, now travels around the world to encourage living in harmony with the natural world.

Audio: How an African bat might help us prevent future Ebola outbreaks
- On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks.
- Our guest is Sarah Olson, an Associate Director of Wildlife Health for the Wildlife Conservation Society. With Ebola very much in the news lately due to a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Olson is here to tell us how research into hammer-headed fruit bats might help us figure out how Ebola is transmitted from animals to humans — and potentially control or prevent future outbreaks of the viral disease.
- The bats don’t contract the disease, but there is evidence that they carry the virus. Olson is part of a study in the Republic of the Congo that seeks to understand how the Ebola virus is transmitted from carriers like hammer-headed fruit bats to other wildlife and humans.

Ape sanctuaries in the DRC brace themselves as Ebola hits the country
- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s most recent Ebola outbreak, which has already claimed 105 human lives, is making great-ape conservation more challenging in an already volatile region.
- The disease can be transmitted between humans and apes, so conservation groups in the country need to take extra precautions to keep the animals in their sanctuaries safe.
- Most at risk is the GRACE gorilla sanctuary, situated four and a half hours from a city where Ebola has been confirmed.
- Researchers say the outbreak is not currently a significant threat to wild ape populations.

How a better understanding of psychopathology in captive primates can aid in conservation efforts
- Maya Kummrow, a doctor of veterinary medicine, writes in a paper recently published in the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine that non-human primates have been used as models of human psychopathology — the study of mental illness — for decades. But, she notes, “the acquired knowledge has only hesitantly been applied to primates themselves.”
- In the paper, Kummrow states that she is seeking to raise awareness among her fellow veterinarians about the wealth of information on NHP psychopathology that is available in human medicine and anthropology literature and calls for “mental health assessments and professionally structured treatment approaches” in NHP medicine, as well.
- In this Q&A, Mongabay spoke with Kummrow about how her review of the literature on NHP psychopathology and treatment might apply to primate conservation efforts.

Hunters are wiping out hornbills in Ghana’s forests
- According to a new study, Ghana is losing hornbill species to “uncontrolled” hunting, mostly for meat, from its forested parks and reserves.
- The researchers found that the five largest species of hornbills in the Bia Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have disappeared in recent decades.
- The authors of the paper suggest that increased enforcement will help protect threatened hornbills, as well as other wildlife species, in areas under intense pressure from humans.

More gorillas and chimpanzees living in Central Africa’s forests than thought
- A study led by WCS researchers pulled together wildlife survey data collected between 2003 and 2013 at 59 sites in five countries across western Central Africa.
- They then developed mathematical models to understand where the highest densities of gorillas and chimpanzees are and why, as well as broader trends in the populations.
- They found that more than 361,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and almost 129,000 central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) inhabit these forests — about 30 percent more gorillas and 10 percent more chimpanzees than previously estimated.
- The team’s analyses also demonstrate that western lowland gorilla numbers are slipping by 2.7 percent a year.

Animal trainers are teaching wildlife to conserve themselves
- Positive training helps pets and their owners bond. But animal trainers working to conserve wildlife often have the opposite goal: teaching animals in the wild to avoid human beings — people often being the most dangerous creatures in the jungle.
- Wildlife kept in zoos have been trained with rewards to accept unnatural processes, procedures that previously might have required restraint or even anesthesia: allowing tooth brushing, hoof trimming, injections and blood draws — turning once alien actions into positive experiences for the captive animals.
- Animal trainers decades ago learned to train dolphins without having physical contact with the animals. More recently, a chimpanzee troop in Sierra Leone was taught to scream alarm in unison when poachers approached, alerting nearby rangers to come to the rescue — achieving an 80 percent decrease in poaching.
- Trainers have taught captive bred condors how to be more like wild condors, seeking food within their natural habitat and not congregating in towns. They’ve also taught polar bears to avoid anything associated with humans, preventing the bears from raiding trash cans and significantly decreasing wildlife conflicts.

Oil palm, rubber could trigger ‘storm’ of deforestation in the Congo Basin
- Earthsight documented approximately 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of deforestation to clear the way for new rubber and oil palm plantations in Central Africa’s rainforest countries in the past five years.
- The team also found that companies in five Central African countries hold licenses for industrial agriculture on another 8,400 square kilometers (3,243 square miles) of land.
- The investigators warn that thousands of hectares of forest could fall to industrial agriculture in the COngo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest, if governance of the forest doesn’t improve.

East Africa’s Albertine Rift needs protection now, scientists say
- The Albertine Rift in East Africa is home to more than 500 species of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet.
- Created by the stretching apart of tectonic plates, the unique ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are also under threat from encroaching human population and climate change.
- A new report details a plan to protect the landscapes that make up the Rift at a cost of around $21 million per year — a bargain rate, scientists argue, given the number of threatened species that could be saved.

Camera trap captures spotted hyena in Gabon national park, the first in 20 years
- The spotted hyena was thought to be extinct in Gabon’s Batéké Plateau National Park for 20 years as a result of wildlife poaching.
- But the camera trap image captured has given conservation groups hope that protection of the park is working and allowing wildlife to return.
- Camera traps have also recently snagged images of a lion, a serval and chimpanzees.

New study: Gorillas fare better in logged forests than chimps
- A study in the northern Republic of Congo found that gorillas and chimpanzees both became scarcer at the onset of logging.
- However, gorillas move backed into logged areas more readily, while chimpanzees were more likely to stay away.
- The researchers believe that gorillas are better able to cope with logging because they’re not as territorial as chimps and they seem to be more flexible in their eating habits.

Forced out or killed: rare chimps go missing from Cameroon mountain forest
- The Endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) is the least numerous subspecies of chimpanzee, with a total population almost certainly less than 9,000, and probably less than 6,000 individuals.
- The estimated population is far smaller in Cameroon, where just four known populations number some 250 individuals, all located in the Northwest region.
- One of those groups, known as “The Great Apes of Tubah” was until recently found in the unprotected Kejom-Keku Mountain Forest.
- But the chimps haven’t been seen in three years, and conservationists fear they’ve been killed or forced to move on. A new road into the Kejom-Keku area has resulted in the loss of half its forest, as herders, farmers, loggers and poachers move in.

Jane Goodall interview: ‘The most important thing is sharing good news’
- Celebrated conservationist and Mongabay advisor Jane Goodall spoke with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler for the podcast just before departing for her latest speaking tour (she travels 300 days a year raising conservation awareness). Here we supply the full transcript.
- This wide-ranging conversation begins with reaction to the science community’s recent acceptance of her six decade contention that animals are individuals with personalities, and moves on to discuss trends in conservation, and she then provides an update on the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI)’s global projects.
- She also challenges trophy hunting as an effective tool for funding conservation (“It’s rubbish,” she says), shares her positive view of China’s quickly growing environmental movement, talks about the key role of technology in conservation, and discusses a range of good news, which she states is always so important to share.
- Amazingly, Dr. Goodall reports that JGI’s youth program Roots & Shoots now has perhaps as many as 150,000 chapters worldwide, making it probably the largest conservation movement in the world, with many millions having been part of the program. An effort is now underway to document them all.

Liberian park protects Critically Endangered western chimpanzees
- The establishment of Grebo-Krahn National Park in southeastern Liberia was approved by the country’s legislature in August 2017.
- The 961-square-kilometer (371-square-mile) park is home to an estimated 300 western chimpanzees.
- There are about 35,000 Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) left in the wild, and Liberia is home to 7,000 of them.

Audio: Katharine Hayhoe on how to talk about climate change: ‘Share from the heart and then the head’
- Our first guest on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast is atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a professor in the Department of Political Science and the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, who teamed up last year with her local PBS station, KTTZ, to write and produce a web series called “Global Weirding.”
- We check in with Hayhoe as she’s in the midst of shooting the second season of Global Weirding in order to get a sense of what to expect from the new episodes of the show and how Hayhoe views the overall political landscape around climate action today.
- Our second guest is Branko Hilje Rodriguez, a PhD student in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Alberta, Canada who studies the soundscapes of different successional stages of the tropical dry forest in Costa Rica’s Santa Rosa National Park, the largest remaining remnant of tropical dry forest in Mesoamerica.
- In this Field Note segment, Hilje Rodriguez plays for us a number of the recordings he’s made in the park, allowing us to hear the sounds of the dry forest during different stages of regrowth and different seasons, as well as some of the iconic bird species that call the dry forest home.

Western Chimpanzee numbers declined by more than 80 percent over the past quarter century
- Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent.
- The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list.
- In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies’ status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

African great ape bushmeat crisis intensifies; few solutions in sight
- Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos are all Critically Endangered or Endangered, and continue to decline toward extinction due to habitat loss and degradation, disease, and illegal hunting.
- Great ape poaching, which supplies growing urban and rural bushmeat markets, is now at crisis levels across Central Africa, and despite conservationists’ efforts, is showing no sign of slowing down.
- Vast networks of logging roads, modern weapons, cell phones, cheap motorized transportation, and high demand for wild meat in urban centers is driving the booming bushmeat market.
- Africa’s great ape sanctuaries rescue some survivors, and active outreach to local communities offer a partial solution. Educational programs for children and adults, teaching the value of great apes, are seen as essential.

Going viral: How advancements in Ebola disease detection in wild apes can help to prevent dangerous outbreaks
- Research using a non-invasive method of detecting Ebola virus antibodies from wild ape dung has shown that non-human great apes can survive the disease.
- Early detection and disease monitoring in wildlife populations can prevent the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola from being transmitted to humans.
- A more comprehensive assessment of health threats to wild great apes can help to determine whether the Ebola virus is of primary concern in a given gorilla or chimpanzee population.

Cross River superhighway changes course in Nigeria
- The 260-kilometer (162-mile) highway is slated to have six lanes and would have run through the center of Cross River National Park as originally designed.
- The region is a biodiversity hotspot and home to forest elephants, drills, Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees and Cross River gorillas.
- The proposal shifts the route to the west, out of the center of the national park, which garnered praise from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
- The route still appears to cut through forested areas and protected lands.

Women could be a key to great ape conservation in the Congo
- The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI), Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE), Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), and Coopera are all organizations working with women in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help advance great ape conservation through education, empowerment, healthcare and food security access.
- Some examples: BCI helps fund pilot micro-credit projects for women who want to launch business enterprises, including soap and garment making. GRACE employs women as surrogate mothers for newly orphaned gorillas during an initial 30-day quarantine period.
- GRACE also provides women and their families with bushmeat alternatives by teaching them to care for and breed alternative protein sources. Coopera helps provide alternative food sources through ECOLO-FEMMES, an organization that trains women in livestock breeding and agriculture to reduce great ape hunting in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- Coopera, working with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots, engages young rape victims in tree planting to provide food sources to wild chimpanzees. JGI’s women’s programs in Uganda and Tanzania keep girls in school through peer support, scholarship programs and sanitary supply access. Educated women have smaller families, reducing stress on the environment.

No safe forest left: 250 captive orphan chimps stuck in sanctuaries
- Cameroon currently has more than 250 rescued chimpanzees living in three chimp wildlife sanctuaries. Attempts to find forests into which to release them — safe from the bushmeat and pet trade, and not already occupied by other chimpanzee populations — have failed so far.
- The intensification of logging, mining and agribusiness, plus new roads into remote areas, along with a growing rural human population, are putting intense pressure on un-conserved forests as well as protected lands.
- Unless habitat loss, poaching and trafficking are controlled in Cameroon, reintroduction of captive chimpanzees may not be achievable. Some conservationists argue, however, that reintroduction of captive animals is needed to enhance genetic resilience in wild populations.
- If current rates of decline are not curbed, primatologists estimate that chimpanzees could be gone from Cameroon’s forests within 15 to 20 years.

Great apes in Asian circus-style shows on rise — so is trafficking
- Asian zoos, circuses and safari parks are mounting large-scale productions with costumed, dancing, roller-skating great apes. Investigations show that nearly all of these trained primates were not bred in captivity, but illegally traded out of Africa and Indonesia, with destinations in China, Thailand and other Asian countries.
- The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the illegal trade may have removed as many as 22,218 great apes from the wild between 2005-2011. An estimated 64 percent were chimpanzees, whereas 56 percent of great apes seized by authorities were thought to be orangutans.
- Wild young apes are traumatized by their capture, and many die along the supply chain, or with their final “owners” by whom they are frequently poorly treated. Young great apes trained in captivity become increasingly unmanageable as they age, and many are “retired” to tiny, solitary cages, or simply disappear.
- Trafficking arrests are rare. UNEP recorded just 27 arrests in Africa and Asia between 2005-2011, over which time more than 1,800 cases of illegally trafficked great apes were documented, with many more undetected. Solutions are in the works, but time is running out for the world’s great apes if they are to be conserved.

Illegal bushmeat trade threatens human health and great apes
- Hunting for bushmeat impacts over 500 wild species in Africa, but is particularly harmful to great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos — whose small, endangered populations struggle to rebound from over-hunting. Along with other major stressors including habitat loss, trafficking and climate change.
- Bushmeat brings humans into close contact with wildlife, creating a prime path for the transmission of diseases like Ebola, as well as new emerging infectious diseases. Disease spread is especially worrisome between humans and closely related African great ape species.
- Bushmeat consumption today is driven by an upscale urban African market, by illegal logging that offers easy access to remote great ape habitat, plus impoverished rural hunters in need of cash livelihoods.
- If the bushmeat problem is to be solved, ineffective enforcement of hunting quotas and inadequate endangered species protections must be addressed. Cultural preferences for bushmeat must also change. Educational programs focused on bushmeat disease risk may be the best way to alter public perceptions.

Ebo forest great apes threatened by stalled Cameroon national park
- Cameroon’s Ebo forest is home to key populations of tool-wielding Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, along with an unspecified subspecies of gorilla, drills, Preuss’s Red Colobus, forest elephants, and a great deal more biodiversity.
- The forest is vulnerable, unprotected due to a drawn-out fight to secure its status as a national park. Logging and hunting threaten Ebo’s biodiversity. The Cameroonian palm oil company Azur recently began planting a 123,000 hectare plantation on its boundary.
- The Ebo Forest Research Project (EFRP) has been working successfully to change the habits of local people who have long subsisted on the forest’s natural resources — turning hunters into great ape guardians. But without the establishment of the national park and full legal protection and enforcement, everyone’s efforts may be in vain.

“Endangered species to declare?” Europe’s understudied bushmeat trade
- Bushmeat can be purchased in Europe’s capital cities, with the meat of endangered species such as primates and pangolins available. But the scale of the problem is not fully understood as few studies have been undertaken at airports and other points of entry to determine its scope.
- In a Paris airport study, 134 passengers arriving from Africa were searched over a period of 17 days; nine were found to be carrying a total of 188 kilograms (414 pounds) of bushmeat. A more recent study of bushmeat arriving from Africa at two Swiss airports found that one third of meat seized was from threatened CITES species including pangolins, small carnivores and primates.
- Based on what evidence there is of the trade, some appears to be organized for profit, with traffickers transporting suitcases full of bushmeat to sell on the black market. Africans who reside in Europe also sometimes bring back bushmeat from Africa as a “taste of home,” potentially contributing to the risk of spreading diseases that may be found in the meat.
- Researchers are urging that DNA analysis tools be used more widely to learn what species are being transported as bushmeat into Europe, and to bring about more prosecutions of bushmeat traffickers who are dealing in endangered species. But with customs officials already stretched, and bushmeat a low priority, the technology is rarely utilized at present.

The Republic of Congo: on the cusp of forest conservation
- The Republic of Congo’s high forest cover and low annual deforestation rates of just over 0.05 percent have led to the country being named as a priority country by the UN’s REDD+ program.
- The country has numerous protected areas and has signed agreements to certify the sustainability and legality of its timber industry.
- Skeptics caution that more needs to be done to address corruption and protect the country’s forests, a third of which are still relatively untouched.

Scrapping Nigerian superhighway buffer isn’t enough, say conservation groups
- The superhighway project, intended to stimulate the Cross River state economy, will no longer include a 20-kilometer-wide buffer zone along its 260-kilometer length.
- The NGO Wildlife Conservation Society said minimizing the destruction necessary for the buffer zone was an important step, but that it will still disrupt communities and wildlife.
- Representatives of the Cross River governor, Ben Ayade, told the media that they intended to move forward with the superhighway despite the criticism.

Loving apes celebrated this Valentine’s Day
- The IUCN estimates that as few as 15,000 bonobos remain in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Bonobos, unlike chimpanzees and humans, live in matriarchal societies and have never been observed killing a member of their own species.
- The California Senate passed a resolution stating that Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) would also be known as World Bonobo Day beginning in 2017.
- Bushmeat hunting, habitat destruction and the wildlife trade are the greatest threats to the survival of bonobos.

NGO takes action to save great apes in Cameroon’s Lebialem Highlands
- The Lebialem Highlands, in Cameroon’s southwest, is a rugged mountainous and plateaued region still inhabited by the Critically Endangered Cross River gorilla, the Endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee and the Vulnerable African forest elephant.
- While the Cameroon government has taken action by protecting swathes of forest in the region, they admit to being unable to fully protect this habitat from incursions by surrounding communities, who go to the protected lands to farm, harvest bushmeat, hunt, log and mine.
- The Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF), an NGO, has stepped in to help protect Highlands conserved areas — including the Tofala Hills Wildlife Sanctuary and the still to be created Mak-Betchou Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Supported by the Rainforest Trust-USA, ERuDeF is also working to improve local village economies and livelihoods in order to take pressure off of wildlife.

Indigenous traditional knowledge revival helps conserve great apes
- Deforestation and hunting continue to put Africa’s great apes at risk. National parks and other top down strategies have met with limited success. Many conservationists are trying alternative strategies, especially harnessing the power of indigenous taboos and other traditional knowledge to motivate local communities to protect great apes.
- In remote parts of Africa, taboos against hunting have long helped conserve gorilla populations. However, those ancient traditions are being weakened by globalization, modernization and Christianity, with anti-hunting taboos and other traditional beliefs being abandoned at a time when they are most needed to conserve great apes.
- Primatologist Denis Ndeloh Etiendem suggests a unique approach to reviving indigenous taboos and traditional beliefs — the creation of videos and films in which these beliefs are presented as a prime reason for conserving wildlife. He also urges that African environmental and general educational curricula focus not on endangered dolphins or whales, but on wildlife found in interior Africa.
- Development specialist Dominique Bikaba emphasizes the importance of moving away from top down federal management, and to local management of community forests by indigenous communities, whose leaders mesh traditional beliefs with modern conservation strategies. Prime examples are successes seen at Burhinyi Community Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘Running out of time’: 60 percent of primates sliding toward extinction
- The assessment of 504 primate species found that 60 percent are on track toward extinction, and the numbers of 75 percent are going down.
- Agricultural expansion led to the clearing of primate habitat nearly three times the size of France between 1990 and 2010, impinging on the range of 76 percent of apes and monkeys.
- By region, Madagascar and Southeast Asia have the most species in trouble. Nearly 90 percent of Madagascar’s more than 100 primates are moving toward extinction.
- Primates also face serious threats from hunting, logging and ranching.

Trade in skulls, body parts severely threatens Cameroon’s great apes
- Primatologists in Cameroon have been heartened in recent years by the discoveries of new great ape populations scattered around the country. Unfortunately for these gorillas and chimpanzees, their numbers are being rapidly diminished by deforestation and human exploitation.
- Cameroon’s gorillas and chimps have long fallen victim to the bushmeat trade, but they are now being hunted vigorously to feed a national and international illegal trade in skulls and other body parts which are being exported to Nigeria, other West African coastal states, and especially to the US and China, either as trophies or for use in traditional medicine.
- Great ape trafficking operations in Cameroon are starting to resemble the ivory trade: International trafficking networks are financing hunters, providing them with motorbikes and sophisticated weapons. A spreading network of logging and agribusiness roads and a porous border between Cameroon and Nigeria are further facilitating the trade.
- The seriousness of this poaching hits home when one considers that during a four-month period in 2015, anti-poaching and anti-trafficking squads in Cameroon arrested 22 dealers and seized 16 great ape limbs, 24 gorilla heads and 34 chimpanzee skulls in separate operations around the country. Law enforcement is likely only detecting 10 percent of the trade.

Great apes and greater challenges: Trafficking in Cameroon
- Cameroon is home to four great ape species and sub-species: the Western Lowland gorilla, Cross River gorilla, Central chimpanzee and Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee. Scientists still don’t fully understand these species and the secrets they may hold, especially for medical science, but those secrets will be lost if the animals are not conserved.
- A thriving trade in ape skulls, bushmeat, and live animal trafficking is threatening to wipe out ape populations already stressed by habitat loss and fragmentation. The Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA) is an NGO that is tackling the traffickers behind the African trade, but they are up against widespread government corruption that is hindering their efforts.
- While confiscations of trafficked great apes is important, estimates put the total of traded animals being detected by law enforcement along trafficking routes at a mere 10 percent. That’s why many conservationists argue that trafficking needs to be stopped not at national borders and airports, but nipped in the bud at the source, in the wild.

Bastion of biodiversity protected in eastern DRC
- The Kabobo Natural Reserve, together with the adjoining Ngandja and Luama Katanga Reserves, protects nearly 7,000 square kilometers of important habitat for biodiversity, watersheds and forests near Lake Tanganyika.
- The Wildlife Conservation Society said that the involvement of local communities has been critical to protecting the area, and that their participation will continue in the management of the reserve.
- Surveys of the Kabobo Natural Reserve put the number of land animals present at 558 and plat species at 1,410.
- Scientists first discovered Prigogine’s black and white colobus monkey (Colobus angolensis prigoginei) in the area in the 1950s.

Home for the holidays: Chimp exits war-torn Iraq, lands in Kenya
- After years of effort, animal welfare advocates have negotiated the freedom of Manno, a trafficked chimpanzee who had been smuggled out of Syria for $15,000 and into a private zoo in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the zoo, Manno suffered severely cramped conditions; he was fed a steady diet consisting mostly of snack foods.
- Freeing the animal involved diplomatic negotiations at the highest level in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Kenya. Manno arrived in Kenya on November 30, and is undergoing a 90-day health quarantine at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary.
- The young chimp still must be accepted into the Sanctuary population. This is a slow, possibly multiyear, process, requiring introduction to a foster mother, followed by introduction to female chimps, then other males in the community. Manno’s long acclimation to humans will not allow him to ever return to the wild.
- The chimp’s rescue was facilitated by individuals and organizations including Spencer Seykar, a Canadian high school teacher; Jason Mier, the executive director of Animals Lebanon; Jane Goodall and her institute; Daniel Stiles of the Project to End Great Ape Slavery; Dr. Stephen Ngulu, head wildlife veterinarian at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the staff of Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary, and others.

Female chimpanzees wait for their turn at the top of the social pecking order
- By studying decades of interactions, scientists have documented that female chimpanzees line up in a pre-determined social order.
- Females wait patiently for higher-ranked females to die off before moving up the social ladder.
- Once a mature female enters the social queue, her ranking remains unchanged until elder females are out of the picture.

Hunted to the brink: Mammals in crisis
- A study pulling together information on threatened land mammals found that hunting for meat and medicine is driving 301 toward extinction.
- The authors raise concerns about food security for humans and ecosystem collapse if we don’t prevent this crisis for mammals.
- Proposed solutions include shoring up international markets for bushmeat and animal body parts, investments in laws and enforcement to protect wildlife, and increased education about the scale of the problem.

Disease prevention a boost to human health and great ape conservation
- Africa’s booming agribusiness — especially oil palm production — and tourism are bringing people into ever-closer contact with gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, creating greater chances for diseases to cross between species.
- A “One Health” approach is helping human communities in Africa improve public health and sanitation to decrease infectious diseases, which in turn helps protect neighboring great apes. Thus, the reduction of rural poverty also enhances great ape conservation.
- Researchers are also regularly monitoring the world’s apes to identify viruses harbored by great apes that might jump to humans the way that simian immunodeficiency virus crossed species and evolved into human AIDS viruses.

One ape, two ape: why counting apes is so difficult — but crucial
- When scientists suddenly bumped Sumatran orangutan counts from 6,600 to over 14,000 animals the media celebrated, but researchers didn’t. Their improved survey methods had allowed them to find many more animals, but also many more threats.
- Likewise, when Silvery gibbons numbers were adjusted up from as few as 387, to as many as 4,500 individuals; the sudden upsurge came not as the result of a gibbon population explosion, but because historical counts had missed many of the animals.
- Having an accurate record of past and current great and lesser ape counts, and knowing what threats and factors drove those numbers up or down, turns out to be absolutely critical to good conservation planning.
- That’s why scientists are compiling vast sophisticated databases, like the A.P.E.S. database, which can overlay and crunch all the known ape population data along with threats ranging from deforestation to poaching.

An agribusiness revolution is needed to save Africa’s last great apes
- Since 2005 up to 227,000 square kilometers (87,645 square miles), an area nearly the size of Ghana, has been acquired in sub-Saharan Africa for large-scale agricultural and forestry concessions. And more concessions are on the way.
- With oil palm production poised to explode in Africa, conservationists are scrambling to set up standards for the industry, an effort complicated by by the extreme poverty and corrupt power elites found in many nations.
- If Africa’s priceless natural heritage is to be preserved, including its great apes, then a revolution in agricultural practices is needed which will demand a cooperative effort by governments, agribusiness and conservationists.

Palm oil’s new frontier: averting a Great Ape catastrophe in Cameroon
- Cameroon, with its vast bio-diverse forests and key great ape habitat, is being eyed as a prime site for oil palm production, making it a center of agro-industry development in Africa. Conservationists hope to avoid mistakes made in Asia.
- Conservationists in Africa are working to implement oil palm standards that will limit deforestation, protect biodiversity, limit carbon emissions, and benefit smallholders, while also supporting economic growth and job creation.
- A key to Africa’s sustainable oil palm production is the implementation of mutually agreed upon industry-wide, and possibly nationwide, sustainable standards for siting and development of plantations.
- Standards being tested are: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) that identifies High Conservation Value areas; a system favored by WWF using integrated land-use planning / smallholders; and Zero Deforestation (ZD) favored by Greenpeace.

Major legal system breakdowns threaten great apes of Africa, Asia
- A comparison of the legal systems in Asian and African developing nations finds similar regulatory defects putting great apes greatly at risk in the face of rapid agribusiness development.
- Gabon, Liberia, Indonesia and Myanmar, for example, have all created conserved areas — protections deeply flawed by a lack of institutional capacity, inadequate funding, and poor enforcement.
- These nations, like other developing countries, suffer from a top-down concentration of political and legal power with centralized urban elites far from the backcountry where environmental and societal harm unfolds.
- The conservation laws of developing nations do not well address the leading cause of great ape decline: an explosion in habitat loss — the chief result of industrial agricultural expansion.

Oil palm company takes lead on sustainable agriculture in Gabon
- To meet global demand for palm oil, companies are rapidly shifting their focus from Southeast Asia to Africa, where conservationists and some companies are working together to avoid mistakes made in Indonesia and Malaysia. One such company is Olam-Gabon, which is teaming up with researchers to site new plantations to minimize biodiversity impacts.
- Some companies are increasingly using Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil standards (RSPO), developed in collaboration with conservation groups, to allow a nuanced approach to site selection that looks at ecosystems, biodiversity, key species, landscapes, carbon sequestration and human use.
- The challenge is finding a balance that allows for new palm oil plantation creation, providing economic growth for developing companies, along with jobs, while maximizing safeguards to protect forests and biodiversity.

Can Cutting-Edge Drone Technology Help Answer the Age-Old Question of Bipedalism?
- Alex Piel, co-founder of the Ugalla Primate Project, explains the unique benefit to evolutionary research that Issa Valley chimpanzee populations provide.
- The increased variety of drone types are allowing researchers to produce ever-more accurate ecological maps in remote locations.
- The Jane Goodall Institute is all-in for the use of drones as conservation tools.

Focus on great apes, draws attention from other species, finds study
- Study found that in African and Asian countries with great apes, scientists tend to focus on few big national parks while ignoring many others.
- Researchers found that 71 percent of published studies focused on mammals, while 31 percent focused on great apes alone.
- Such bias could mean that knowledge of conservation today could become less applicable in the future, researchers say.

‘Where Have All the Animals Gone?’ – a journey through Africa and Asia
- Peterson’s book is a witty, humorous, and sometimes gut-wrenching, look into how human presence and consumption is driving the disappearance of wildlife.
- In the book, Peterson joins Karl Ammann, an eccentric award-winning wildlife photographer, on some of his investigations in parts of Africa and Asia.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Peterson talks about how he turned several years of travels and adventures with Ammann into a gripping narrative of wildlife trafficking, bushmeat hunting, vanishing wildlife, and conservation.

U.S. National Institutes of Health to stop using chimpanzees for research altogether
- NIH director Francis Collins announced the decision in an email to the agency’s administrators on November 16.
- 50 “reserve” chimps being kept by the NIH are being sent to sanctuaries and any NIH funding that is supporting other biomedical research using chimpanzees will be phased out.
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed all chimps under the Endangered Species Act last June.

Chimpanzee mother seen caring for severely disabled baby in the wild
- A team of Japanese scientists have observed a mother chimpanzee taking care of her severely disabled baby in Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania.
- Nicknamed XT11, the disabled baby had abnormalities similar to those reported for a captive chimpanzee with Down-like syndrome, study reports.
- XT11 survived till she was nearly two years old, largely due to her mother’s care, the authors believe.

Using freely available tools to monitor forest cover in critical chimpanzee habitat

Think of it as trying to help the long-lost cousins who never left your home town. Researchers and friends at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) are doing just that for chimpanzees. Our closest living relatives still live in their hometown African forests but these forests are under increasing threat. To monitor the health of chimpanzee […]
Scientists sound the alarm on African palm oil investment
- Africa’s people, forests and wildlife are in trouble if the mostly unbridled expansion of oil palm in West and Central Africa is allowed to continue unchecked, says an organization of African scientists.

Endangered chimp habitat under threat from climate change

Climate change could make life more difficult for the world’s rarest chimpanzee subspecies, reported a team of scientists in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology on Tuesday. The range of the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) spans the border of its namesake countries, and it inhabits mountain rainforests as well as the transition zone between the […]
Scandal and intrigue overshadow environment at the Simandou mine in Guinea

Critically Endangered chimpanzees stand to lose home over giant iron mine in West Africa When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa decades ago well-laid plans often crumbled to dust in the unpredictable confusion of life there. We just muttered with resignation, “WAWA” – West Africa wins again. The Simandou iron ore mine […]
Tribal violence comes naturally to chimpanzees

It all went to hell when Jane Goodall started handing out bananas. Within a few years, the previously peaceful chimpanzees she was studying split into two warring tribes. Gangs of males from the larger faction systematically slaughtered their former tribemates. All over the bananas. Or so the argument goes. The idea that feeding the chimps […]
Jane Goodall: 5 reasons to have hope for the planet

su Dr. Jane Goodall with Freud, a chimpanzee from Gombe. Photograph © Michael Neugebauer Jane Goodall is not only arguably the most famous conservationist who ever lived, but also the most well-known and respected female scientist on the planet today. Her path to reach that stature is as unlikely as it is inspiring. Told to […]
Mapping mistake leaves wildlife at risk

Administrative maps show DRC’s Luama Katanga Reserve in the wrong place, letting mining concessions and agriculture threaten the reserve’s unique wildlife – including a new plant species. Scientists have discovered a new, endangered plant species in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in an area that is supposed to be protected as a reserve. However, […]
Flying under the radar in Central Africa, Chinese companies may be wreaking environmental havoc

Tchimpounga, chimpanzees, and extractive industries in the Republic of Congo “Tchimpounga is not just a sanctuary,” shouted Rebeca Atencia above the din of the outboard motor, as she pointed to our progress up the Kouilou River on her tablet, donated by Google, which included access to high-resolution satellite maps. The GPS tracking showed us as […]
Google’s new Gombe Street View lets users ‘walk’ along chimp trails and into Jane Goodall’s house

New maps allow public exploration of the area Goodall has used for research for nearly fifty years Google Maps is now available for Tanzanian forest paths. Users can walk virtually along the same trails Jane Goodall has used for decades of chimpanzee study — and even into her house. Gombe Street View, a joint effort […]
Jane Goodall joins mongabay

Jane Goodall. Photo by: Morten Bjarnhof/GANT. Famed primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall—whose image is known the world over—has joined the advisory board of mongabay.org. This is the non-profit branch of mongabay.com, an environmental and science website with a special focus on tropical forests. “I began visiting [Mongabay] when I was researching information for my books, […]
The Zanaga iron ore mine – a test of best laid plans for preserving wildlife

Logging companies threaten to undermine the mining industry’s efforts to leave biodiversity better off One of the largest iron ore deposits in Africa is located in a strip 47 kilometers long and three kilometers wide in the Republic of the Congo (RoC), bordering Gabon. A core section of the Guineo-Congolian Forest rises above this vast […]
Why are great apes treated like second-class species by CITES?

CITES has responded to this commentary, refuting certain points: Information on CITES and great apes, including on the outcomes of Standing Committee 65, can be found on the CITES website. The author found baby chimpanzees offered for sale on Facebook as pets for children. The seller, a woman in Cameroon, promised to provide all necessary […]
Can it be stopped? Ghana’s forests ‘could completely disappear in less than 25 years’

Rampant deforestation has cleared seven percent of Ghana’s tree cover in just over a decade Ghana contains forests that are biologically unique and important both for the wildlife they contain and the human communities that depend on them. However, the country is experiencing one of the greatest rates of deforestation in West Africa. At its […]
Running to reforest: communities, NGOs work to save Ugandan reserve in the midst of massive deforestation

Ugandan forest managers stress the importance of public support and participation in conservation efforts Stung by massive loss of forest cover in Bugoma central forest reserve, part of a vast chimpanzee habitat in the western part of Uganda, seven private local and international organizations in the east African country have joined hands to raise awareness […]
How did Ebola Zaïre Get to Guinea?

Is the great ape trade responsible for the current outbreak of Ebola? The vicious Ebola virus outbreak that has already killed more than 800 people this year, in addition to sowing panic, fear and confusion throughout West Africa, was not a strain endemic to the region as initially believed. Instead the University of Edinburgh found […]
Ndoki Forest, charmed or cursed? Conservationists admit sustainable logging wilting in naïve chimp habitat

“You come across that crest, and … you’re going from forest that has already been exploited to this kind of no-man’s land… It just felt like you were going into this vast unknown wilderness” – Mike Fay from Eating Apes by Dale Peterson and Karl Ammann. Mike Fay, famed explorer and conservationist, said this of […]
Invasion of the oil palm: western Africa’s native son returns, threatening great apes

New research shows African apes likely to be affected by palm oil, but there’s hope, says the author As palm oil producers increasingly look to Africa’s tropical forests as suitable candidates for their next plantations, primate scientists are sounding the alarm about the destruction of ape habitat that can go hand in hand with oil […]
The last best place no more: massive deforestation destroying prime chimp habitat in Uganda

Chimp habitat disappearing as river basin loses forest cover Uganda’s Kafu River, which is about 180 kilometers (110 miles) long, is part of a vast chimpanzee habitat that includes Budongo and Bugoma Forest Reserves, as well as several unofficial protected areas. However, this region is losing a significant portion of valuable chimpanzee habitat, with Global […]
Apeidemiology: researchers model ape disease transmission for the first time

Study finds chimps at high risk for epidemics The year was 1854, and cholera outbreaks had rendered London terrified and British anesthesiologist Dr. John Snow fascinated. In what is thought to be the first epidemiological study, Dr. Snow carefully mapped the locations of the victims and tried to find a common denominator. “I found,” he […]
Greenpeace accuses controversial palm oil company and Cameroon government of illegal logging

Aerial view of Herakles Farm’s oil palm plantation nursery. Photo by: © Greenpeace/Alex Yallop. Greenpeace has just accused one of the world’s most controversial oil palm companies, Herakles Farms, of colluding with top government officials to sell off illegally logged timber to China. According to a new report from the environmental group, a stealth agreement […]
Hope in the Heart of Darkness: huge population of chimpanzees discovered in the DRC

After weeks of slogging through thigh deep mud on hired motorbikes, passing dozens of bushmeat vendors offering everything from okapi skins to monkey meat to chained chimpanzee orphans, Dr. Thurston C. Hicks and his colleagues had finally arrived at their goal: they were sitting in a clearing in the legendary Gangu Forest, one of the […]
Little dude takes the prize: rare dormouse wins BBC camera trap contest (photos)

This photo of Roach’s mouse-tailed dormouse has won the 2013 BBC Wildlife Camera-Trap Photo of the Year award. Photo by: Halim Yalçın Diker/Yer Yediuyuru Yok Olmasın, Turkey. The image of a rare dormouse has won the fourth annual BBC Wildlife Camera-Trap Photo of the Year award. Photographed in Turkey, the Roach’s mouse-tailed dormouse (Myomimus roachi) […]
Smuggler who illegally traded 500 chimps gets one year in prison

Wildlife smuggler, Ousame Diallo, who has admitted to illegally trafficking 500 endangered chimpanzees out of the Republic of Guinea, was sentenced to a year in prison in the West African country reports WWF. The arrest and charge was supported by INTERPOL and to anti-wildlife trafficking local group, GALF. “This time the result is excellent, we […]
Endangered chimps and forest elephants found in rainforest to be logged for palm oil

A biological survey of forests slated for destruction for a palm oil project in Cameroon has uncovered 23 species of large mammals, including the world’s most endangered chimpanzee subspecies, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti). The project in question, operated by U.S.-based company Herakles Farms, has come under stiff criticism both locally and abroad for […]
Illegal marijuana cultivation threatens Nigeria’s forests and chimps

The world’s highest deforestation rate, the execution of eight environmental activists including a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and ongoing turmoil surrounding oil operations in the Niger River Delta has created a notoriously disreputable environmental record for the West African country. Now, a new threat is rising in the already-compromised forests of Nigeria: illegal marijuana cultivation. […]
Making movies to save Uganda’s great apes

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. Ajani and his friends are caught trespassing in the […]
Building a new generation of local conservationists: how improving education in Uganda may save one of the world’s great forests

The 2013 Zoos and Aquariums: Committing to Conservation (ZACC) conference runs from July 8th—July 12th in Des Moines, Iowa, hosted by the Blank Park Zoo. Ahead of the event, Mongabay.com is running a series of Q&As with presenters. For more interviews, please see our ZACC feed. Students learn about sustainable farming. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth […]
Great apes suffer mid-life crisis too

Wild male orangutan in Sumatra. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Homo sapiens are not alone in experiencing a dip in happiness during middle age (often referred to as a mid-life crisis) since great apes suffer the same according to new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). A new study of […]
Rarest gorillas lose half their habitat in 20 years

Lowland gorilla in Gabon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Cross River gorillas and eastern gorillas lost more than half their habitat since the early 1990s due to deforestation, logging, and other human activities, finds a comprehensive new assessment across great apes’ range in West and Central Africa. The study, published in the journal Diversity and […]
Chimp conservation requires protecting fragmented river forests in Uganda

Forest fragments along riversides in Uganda may make good habitats for chimpanzees but remain unprotected, according to a new study in mongabay.com’s open access journal Tropical Conservation Society (TCS). Researchers surveyed a riverine forest known as Bulindi in Uganda, in-between Budongo and Bugoma Forest Reserves, to determine if it was suitable for the long-term survival […]
Scientists say massive palm oil plantation will “cut the heart out” of Cameroon’s rainforest

Aerial photographs of Talangaye oil palm nursery in Nguti subdivision of Herakles Farms planned oil palm plantation. Photographs taken in February 2012. Photographer wishes to remain anonymous. Eleven top scientists have slammed a proposed palm oil plantation in a Cameroonian rainforest surrounded by five protected areas. In an open letter, the researchers allege that Herakles […]
Without data, fate of great apes unknown

Improving the evidence base for African great ape conservation: An interview with Sandra Tranquilli. Silverback gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Our closest nonhuman relatives, the great apes, are in mortal danger. Every one of the six great ape species is endangered, and without more effective conservation measures, they […]
Republic of the Congo expands park to protect fearless chimps

A young “naive” chimp from the Goualougo Triangle. Photo by: Michael Nichols, National Geographic. The Republic of the Congo has expanded its Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park by 37,295 hectares (144 square miles) to include a dense swamp forest, home to a population of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) that show no fear of humans. Known as the Goualougo […]
Sierra Leone creates rainforest park
Sierra Leone, one of Africa’s poorest countries, today announced the establishment of Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP), an area of forest home to chimpanzees, a key population of pygmy hippo, and hundreds of bird species, reports the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The park covers 71,000 hectares (175,000 acres) in southeastern Sierra […]
Entertainment media skews public perception of chimpanzees in the wild

You’ve probably seen them: the TV ads showing chimpanzees wearing suits, driving cars, or smoking cigars. These ads may tickle our funny bone, but they warp our perceptions of how chimpanzees are faring in the wild, researchers at Duke University have found. The study, published October 12 in the journal PLoS ONE, examined whether watching […]
Unsung heroes: the life of a wildlife ranger in the Congo

Bunda Bokitsi. Photo by: Zoological Society of Milwaukee (ZSM). The effort to save wildlife from destruction worldwide has many heroes. Some receive accolades for their work, but others live in obscurity, doing good—sometimes even dangerous—work everyday with little recognition. These are not scientists or big-name conservationists, but wildlife rangers, NGO staff members, and low level […]
Saving (and studying) one of Nigeria’s last montane forests

The Nigerian Montane Forest Project’s field station set in the Ngel Nyaki Forest. Photo by: Pierre-Michel Forget. Between 2000 and 2010, Nigeria lost nearly a third (31 percent) of its forest cover, while its primary forests suffered even worse: in just five years (2000 to 2005) over half of the nation’s primary forests were destroyed, […]
Conservationists seek $15M for rarest chimp
A new conservation plan calls for $14.6 million in funding to save the world’s rarest subspecies of chimp: the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, reports the Wildlife Conservation Scoeity (WCS). Limited to pockets of rainforest habitat in Nigeria and Cameroon, the chimp is endangered by the bushmeat trade and habitat loss. Less than 9,000 — possibly as few […]
Elephants cooperate as well as chimps
A new study proves that elephants understand how sometimes two is better than one. Working with Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, researchers reconstructed a classic cooperation test that was originally developed for chimpanzees. Subjects must pull on a rope to receive a reward, such as food, however—and here’s the crux—the […]
UN and conservation organizations condemn big oil’s plan to drill in Virunga National Park
WWF, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the UN have all recently expressed concerns about two oil companies’ plan to explore for oil in Africa’s oldest and famed Virunga National Park. Home to a quarter of the world’s mountain gorillas, as well as chimpanzees, hippos, lions, forest elephants, and rare birds […]
African apes threatened by rising temperatures

Most people wish each day had more than 24 hours. But as the planet heats up, that limited number of hours might push endangered African apes even closer to extinction by making their current habitats unsuitable for their lifestyle, according to a controversial study published on 23 July in the Journal of Biogeography. Researchers from […]
New plan to save the chimpanzee from extinction

Humankind’s closest relative, the chimpanzee, is classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Threatened by habitat and forest loss, hunting for bushmeat, trafficking for the illegal pet trade, mining, and disease, the species remains in a precarious position. Yet a new 10-year-plan with East and Central African hopes to ensure the chimpanzee’s (Pan troglodytes) […]
Protected areas vital for saving elephants, chimps, and gorillas in the Congo

In a landscape-wide study in the Congo, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) found that core protected areas and strong anti-poaching efforts are necessary to maintain viable populations of forest elephants, western lowland gorillas, and chimpanzees—all of which are threatened with extinction. Evaluating various land-uses in the Republic of Congo’s Ndoki-Likouala Conservation Landscape—including a national park, […]
Jane Goodall renews her faith in nature and humanity during the “Gombe 50” anniversary, An interview with Dr. Jane Goodall

Celebrating 50 years of pioneering research and sharing an inspiring vision for our future, world-renowned primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall renews her faith in nature and humanity during the “Gombe 50” anniversary. 2010 marks a monumental milestone for the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) and its founder, Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE. Fifty years ago, Goodall, […]
Hyenas cooperate more easily than chimpanzees

Spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) could show chimpanzees a thing or two about working together, according to a new study. Hyenas, prodigious hunters, pull down prey together. Christine M. Drea, an associate professor in the department of Evolutionary Biology at Duke University, started to ask questions about the cooperative hunting habits of hyenas while she was […]
‘Greening’ logging concessions could help save great apes

Promoting reduced impact logging in forest areas already under concession could help protect populations of endangered great apes, argues a new report published by WWF. Analyzing scientific studies on the consequences of different types of logging on great apes, Arnold van Kreveld and Ingrid Roerhorst found that logging concessions certified by the Forest Stewardship Council […]
Examining monkey tools: archaeology expands to include non-human primates

Primate archaeology: old science gets new members Archaeology, the study of ancient cultures and their artifacts, has always been confined to the technology of humans and direct human ancestors. However, a new study recently published in the journal Nature examines the benefits of expanding the field of archaeology to include non-human primates. Until a half-century […]
Did malaria come from chimps?
Malaria may have jumped from chimpanzees to humans much like AIDS and the Ebola virus did, report researchers writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Analyzing blood samples from nearly 100 chimps in Cameroon and Ivory Coast, Francisco Ayala of the University of California Irvine and colleagues found that an early variant of […]
NASA photos reveal destruction of 99% of rainforest park in Rwanda

Satellite images released by NASA show nearly complete destruction of Rwanda’s Gishwati Forest between 1986 and 2001. Deforestation of the forest reserve is largely the result of subsistence harvesting and cultivation by refugees in the aftermath of the country’s 1994 genocide. Overall only 600 hectares of Gishwati’s original 100,000 hectares of forest remain, a loss […]
Chimpanzee population plummets 90 percent in supposedly strong region
Chimp populations continue to decline in Africa. A new survey of our closest relatives in the Cote D’Ivoire found that the population fell from an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals to a paltry 800 to 1,200, a decline that took place in less than twenty years. Perhaps most troubling about this new survey is Cote […]
Male chimps use meat to seduce

Male chimpanzees who share meat with females over a long period of time have a better chance of mating, according to a new study published in PLoS ONE. Studying chimps in Tai National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, researchers from the Mac Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology observed that female chimps have sex more frequently with males […]
Flu epidemic killing bonobos in Congo sanctuary

Six bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, have died from a flu epidemic in a month at the Lola Ya Bonobo in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ten more have contracted the flu. “There is no fever. Antibiotics don’t do anything. The bonobos have severe respiratory infections and then they can’t breath for 3 days […]
Dedicated rock-throwing chimp proves longterm planning

Côte d'Ivoire's endangered chimp population falls 99% since 1960
Cote d’Ivoire’s endangered chimp population falls 99% since 1960 Côte d'Ivoire's endangered chimp population falls 99% since 1960 Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com October 14, 2008
48% of primates threatened with extinction

48% of primates threatened with extinction 48% of primates threatened with extinction mongabay.com August 5, 2008 48 percent of the world’s primate species are at risk of extinction, according to the first comprehensive review of the world’s primates since 2003. The results were released as an update to the IUCN Red List at the 22nd […]
Does logging contribute to AIDS deaths in Africa?

Does logging contribute to AIDS deaths in Africa? Does logging contribute to AIDS deaths in Africa? Rhett Butler, mongabay.com June 14, 2008 Human-widlife interactions are an important vector for emerging diseases, especially in the tropics Logging activities in tropical Africa may pose hidden health risks to wildlife and humans according to a veterinary pathobiologist speaking […]
Rwanda launches reforestation project to protect chimps, drive ecotourism

Rwanda launches reforestation project to protect chimps, drive ecotourism Rwanda launches reforestation project to protect chimps, drive ecotourism mongabay.com March 18, 2008 Conservationists in Rwanda have launched an ambitious reforestation project that aims to create a forest corridor to link an isolated group of chimpanzees to larger areas of habitat in Nyungwe National Park. The […]
Dirt-munching helps protect chimps from malaria

Dirt-munching helps protect chimps from malaria Dirt-munching helps protect chimps from malaria mongabay.com January 10, 2008 Soil ingestion helps chimps protect themselves from malaria, reports a new study published in the journal Naturwissenschaften. Apparently geophagy, as the deliberate behavior is known, “increases the potency of ingested plants with anti-malarial properties.” The health effects of leaves […]
Rainforest Reserve Established in DR Congo to save bonobo
ï»¿ Rainforest Reserve Established in DR Congo to save bonobo Rainforest Reserve Established in DR Congo to save bonobo Bonobo Conservation Initiative November 19, 2007 Editor’s summary: The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has announced the creation of a 11,803-square mile rainforest reserve to protect the habitat of the endangered bonobo, the […]

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