location: Cote D’Ivoire

location: Cote D’Ivoire

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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.

Study: Tall trees and shade boost bat diversity on Africa’s cocoa farms
- Insect-eating bats prefer cocoa farms that retain large, old-growth trees that mimic the natural forest conditions.
- New research found higher abundance and diversity of bats on farms with 65% or greater shade cover — still common on cocoa farms in places like Cameroon, but rare in major cocoa-producing areas of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
- Related research has established that bats and birds can reduce the amount of pesticides cocoa farmers use, but also find yields decline where shade cover is greater than 30%.
- Researchers hope to find optimal levels of shade from native trees for agroforestry systems that provide homes for friendly bat and bird species while maximizing yields for farmers.

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.

Forests & Finance: From logging in Cameroon to cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire
- Conservationists have flagged logging activity by a company in Cameroon that’s clearing forest near a national park in apparent breach of its permits.
- A campaign since 2017 to convince farmers in Côte d’Ivoire not to clear forests for new cocoa plantations is bearing fruit, with deforestation in the country falling by 47% in 2021.
- In Malawi, a replanting effort aims to revive populations of the endemic and threatened Mulanje cyad, an ancient tree species that grows on the mountain of the same name.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

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.

Why farmers, not industry, must decide the future of cocoa (commentary)
- As companies, NGOs, and experts look to agroforestry to solve many of the sustainability challenges facing the cocoa sector, Mighty Earth analyst Sam Mawutor argues that the cocoa agroforestry ‘revolution’ must be one led by farmers
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Côte d’Ivoire braces to save what’s left of its single-digit forest cover
- The Côte d’Ivoire government says it will work to pretect its remaining forests, following a national inventory that shows the country’s forest cover has declined to less than 9%.
- Forests are under pressure from expanding agriculture, including extensive cocoa and cashew plantations.
- The country’s southeastern Tanoé-Ehy forest shows a possible path forward; it’s the focus of a community-based forest management project, with efforts to declare it a voluntary natural reserve.

Forests falling for cashew monocultures: A ‘repeated mistake’ in Côte d’Ivoire (commentary)
- Savannas and dry forests in vast parts of Côte d’Ivoire are being transformed into orchards of cashew trees, just as large areas of its rainforest have fallen for cocoa.
- Grown in extensive monocultures, cashew has raised incomes but led to deforestation and incursions into protected forests, as major stakeholders overlook the loss of trees and agro-biodiversity.
- Pollination and human diets are suffering, too: nature-based approaches like agroforestry are needed to create a diversified landscape that can make cashew sustainable in the long run.
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

It’s Juneteenth, but these American companies are still profiting from slavery (commentary)
- Samuel Mawutor, forest campaign group Mighty Earth’s Senior Advisor for Africa, argues that while June 19th marks the official end of slavery in the Confederacy, American agribusiness companies are still engaging in practices analogous to slavery in their commodity supply chains.
- Mawutor specifically calls out Cargill, which he says isn’t doing enough to address labor abuses in its cocoa supply chain.
- “The cocoa sector is notorious for its widespread use of child labor and other abuses– so much so that in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, groups from both cocoa producing and consuming countries signed an open letter on racial injustice in the cocoa sector,” Mawutor writes. “It is estimated that 1.56 million children work in the cocoa industry; many are forced to use dangerous tools and chemicals and carry enormous weights, in direct violation of international labor standards, the UN convention on child labor, and domestic laws.”
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

To save chocolate’s future, ‘start now and go big’ on agroforestry
- Cocoa production in Côte d’Ivoire began in the 1950s in forests bordering Ghana, and progressively shifted west as trees were removed and soil exhausted. Côte d’Ivoire lost 217,866 hectares of protected forest from 2001 to 2014 to monocultures of it.
- Now, the region where cocoa can be grown is shrinking due to climate and rainfall patterns: agroforestry is the sole way ensure that it can continue as the mainstay crop of the economies of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, so it’s time to ‘go big’ on implementing it widely.
- Agroforestry cools the microclimates on farms and increases climate resiliency and biodiversity, but is a complex, time consuming technique that varies by region.
- Careful selection of tree species and spacing are critical to maximize yields, which is a key problem to solve toward wider adoption of agroforestry-grown chocolate.

Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances
- Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all over the world as limitations of the globe’s highly industrialized agriculture become obvious.
- On the old and exhausted soils of Africa, trees’ power to nourish life is potentially integral to a reboot of the continent’s agriculture.
- Agroforestry is the intentional combination of woody perennials like trees and shrubs with crops and also livestock to create a resilient “food ecosystem” that benefits farmers, biodiversity and the climate.
- In an analysis for Mongabay, agroforestry expert Patrick Worms suggests that while news reports show forests burning in many places, one can take heart from the fact that trees are busily taking root upon the world’s vast swaths of farmland.

Sounding the alarm about illegal logging? There’s an app for that
- Illegal timber accounts for 15% to 30% of the timber trade globally and is worth more than $100 billion. A significant share of this illegally harvested timber is sold in European markets.
- In the vast territories of both the Amazon and the Congo, the largest tropical rainforests in the world, authorities largely lack the capacity to monitor for illegal mining and logging activities.
- Using the customizable app ForestLink, people living within and around the forests can send alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other stakeholders from remote areas without mobile connectivity or internet service.
- Community alerts have triggered more than 30 verification and enforcement missions by civil society organizations and local authorities in Cameroon, the DRC and Ghana in 2019 alone.

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.

Treetop cameras capture first known video of a wild roloway monkey
- Treetop cameras in Côte d’Ivoire’s Tanoé-Ehy forest recently captured the first known video of a wild roloway monkey, a critically endangered species that spends most of its time high up in trees.
- There are only about 300 roloway monkeys left in the wild, and 36 individuals living in captivity, so conservation efforts are paramount to preserve the species, according to experts.
- Conservationists are also hoping to capture video of the critically endangered Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey, which hasn’t been spotted in 42 years.

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.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Action plan for red colobus
- Across Africa, red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus spp.) are threatened by hunting and loss of forest habitat.
- The presence of red colobus monkeys, whose range overlaps with that of three-quarters of other African primates, is a strong indicator of healthy forests.
- The Red Colobus Action Plan aims to strengthen conservation by building capacity, coordinating research, and raising the profile of these leaf-eating monkeys.

Video: Pango-Cam offers amazing and unique view of pangolin behavior
- The Pango-Cam is a first-of-its-kind camera setup attached to a black-bellied pangolin’s back to provide unique footage of the animal’s behavior.
- A collaboration between filmmaker Katie Schuler, pangolin biologist Matthew Shirley, and National Geographic’s Exploration Technology Lab, the team recently recorded excellent footage in Nigeria, as seen in the video below.
- Pangolins are poorly understood and are also under grave threat from the illegal wildlife trade, so it’s hoped the Pango-Cam can improve awareness and knowledge of the secretive animals.
- Pango-Cam footage is featured in Schuler’s new film that’s appearing at Jackson Wild, a conservation event and film festival running in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from Sept. 21-27.

The world lost a Belgium-size area of old growth rainforest in 2018
- Newly released data indicate the tropics lost around 120,000 square kilometers (around 46,300 square miles) of tree cover last year – or an area of forest the size of Nicaragua.
- The data indicate 36,400 square kilometers of this loss – an area the size of Belgium – occurred in primary forest. This number is an increase over the annual average, and the third-highest amount since data collection began.
- Indonesia primary forest loss dropped to the lowest level recorded since 2002. Brazil’s numbers are also down compared to the last two years, but still higher than the 18-year average.
- Meanwhile, primary rainforest deforestation appears to be on the rise elsewhere. Colombia recorded the highest level since measurement began at the beginning of the century. Madagascar had the highest proportion of its tropical forest lost in 2018; Ghana experienced the biggest proportional change over 2017.

Norway divests from plantation companies linked to deforestation
- This week, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – released its 2018 holdings.
- Thirty companies were divested from on the basis that they “impose substantial costs on other companies and society as a whole and so are not long-term sustainable.” These “risk-based divestments” appear to include four plantation companies: Olam International, Halcyon Agri Corp, Sime Darby Plantation and Sipef.
- These companies are involved in the production of commodity crops in tropical areas in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Oceania and have been criticized for destructive land use practices like deforestation.

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.

West African countries come together to stop the illegal rosewood trade
- Several species of rosewood, belonging to the genera Dalbergia and Pterocarpus and collectively known as hongmu, are highly sought after by Chinese furniture manufacturers, who use them to make products that are coveted status symbols.
- The majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asian countries, but West Africa has become one of the largest exporting regions feeding China’s growing demand for rosewood in the past few years.
- In 2014, nearly half of China’s rosewood imports came from Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries, which supplied just 10 percent of Chinese rosewood imports a decade ago.

Cleaning up cacao: making the chocolate business more sustainable
- The cacao business has struggled with human rights, labor, and environmental issues.
- Project Hope and Fairness problems in the sector by helping local communities produce higher value products.
- Project Hope and Fairness was founded by Tom Neuhaus, a former Peace Corps volunteer.

Rainforests: 10 things to watch in 2015

What’s in store for rainforests in the new year.
Scientists use genes, feces to study disappearing monkeys

Technique may offer effective, easy way to monitor hard-to-find animals Human pressures through tree clearing and poaching are reducing both forest and fauna in West Africa. In response to dwindling primate populations, a new study published this week in mongabay.com’s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science used genetics techniques to examine their makeup and outlook – […]
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 […]
Over 9,000 primates killed for single bushmeat market in West Africa every year

Over the past 25 years, West Africa’s primates have been put at risk due to an escalating bushmeat trade compounded with forest loss from expanding human populations. In fact, many endemic primates in the Upper Guinea forests of Liberia and Ivory Coast have been pushed to the verge of extinction. To better understand what’s happening, […]
Bloodsucking flies help scientists identify rare, hard-to-find mammals

The face of the blue bottle fly (Calliphora vomitoria). New research shows how this carrion-eater carries the mammals of the forest in his stomach. Photo by: J.J. Harrison. Last year scientists released a study that is likely to revolutionize how conservationists track elusive species. Researchers extracted the recently sucked blood of terrestrial leeches in Vietnam’s […]
Mysterious pygmy hippo filmed in Liberia
Conservationists have captured the first ever footage (see video below) of the elusive pygmy hippo (Choeropsis liberiensis) in Liberia. The forest-dwelling, nocturnal species—weighing only a quarter of the size of the well-known common hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius)—has proven incredibly difficult to study. But the use of camera traps in Liberia’s Sapo National Park has allowed researchers […]
Locals key to saving primate-rich wetlands in Cote D’Ivoire

One of the world’s top 25 most endangered primates: the roloway monkey (Cercopithecus diana roloway) photographed in the Munich Zoo. Saved from being converted into a vast palm oil plantation by PALM-CI in 2009, the Ehy Tanoé wetlands and forest in the Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is home to three gravely endangered primates and as […]
How free trade has devastated Africa’s farmers and poor

A push in the mid-1980s for Africa to embrace free trade to aid its economies backfired in many of the continent’s poorest countries, argues a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Africa was pushed to rollback government involvement in development and instead to rely on the private sector: government […]
Dangers for journalists who expose environmental issues

The following is the text of report [PDF] released by Reporters Without Borders. It looks at 13 cases of journalists and bloggers who have been killed, physically attacked, jailed, threatened or censored for reporting on the environment, and highlights the need for a free press to tackle ecological challenges. Guinean journalist Lai Baldé has been […]
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 […]
Environmental campaign blocks palm oil project in Cote d’ Ivoire wetland
Environmentalists have thwarted plans to establish an oil palm plantation in the Tanoe forest wetlands of southern Cote d’ Ivoire (Ivory Coast), reports AFP. In announcement Friday, Palmci, the country’s largest palm oil company, blamed environmental groups for scuttling the project. “Palmci has decided to abandon this project in the face of the refusal of […]
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 […]
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
Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests

Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com January 22, 2006 The state of West Africa’s rainforests West Africa’s once verdant and extensive rainforests are now a historical footnote. Gone to build ships and furniture, feed hungry mouths, and supply minerals and gems to the West, the band of […]

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