Threats to Primates & Primate Conservation

[Lisbeth]

Action is needed to save West Africa’s critically endangered chimpanzees

June 2019


Camera trap image of adult female chimpanzee with her offspring in the fallow area in Moyamba district of Sierra Leone foraging on oranges. Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the western African subspecies of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) as “Critically Endangered”. It had previously been listed as “Endangered”.

This change of status reflected dramatic declines in population numbers, of 80% over 24 years. And the outlook for this ape subspecies’ future is not good. The IUCN predicted declines of 6% per annum if threats to the chimpanzees weren’t urgently averted.

These threats are complex. Most of the species lives outside protected areas in West Africa. This means they are susceptible to extinction because of rapid land conversion that’s driven especially by large-scale development projects.

Chimpanzees need wild resources for food and nesting; they mostly eat fruit and typically make a new nest in a tree every night to sleep in. Although chimpanzees are highly intelligent and adaptable, their ability to survive in environments impacted by humans depends on several important factors.

These include how connected different chimpanzee groups are to one another, as well as local, social and environmental conditions. In some areas, chimpanzees are actively hunted for meat, witchcraft and use in traditional medicine. They are also targeted to protect crops and because people fear the animals will harm them.

So are Pan troglodytes verus that live outside protected areas in West Africa doomed? Our recent study suggests that not all hope is lost. We carried out a collaborative research project between the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology Institute in the UK, Spanish academics and the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone’s Moyamba district.

Among other things, we found that roads are hemming chimpanzees in and affecting their freedom of movement. It also became apparent that some areas in agricultural dominated landscapes should be set aside so that the wild fruiting trees chimpanzee feed on may regenerate. This would stop the chimps from targeting people’s crops. We also suggest that swamps should be conserved as they provide good safe cover for chimpanzees where there is little forest left.

Overall, our findings suggest that conserving chimpanzees in this area will require a mixture of bottom-up approaches involving local people in decision-making processes, as well as top-down strategies. Female chimpanzees only reproduce every five to six years; their populations are slow to recover from decline, most of which are attributable to human behaviour and activity.

People therefore have a moral responsibility to conserve them: not only because they are our closest living relatives and are highly intelligent and sentient beings, but also because they help to manage our ecosystems by dispersing the seeds of fruit trees they ingest.

Key findings

One of our key findings related to road infrastructure. We found that even untarred roads in places where chimpanzees are not hunted negatively influence how chimpanzees use their environment. Chimpanzees prefer to roam in areas distant from roads, although they are also known to cross roads if this is necessary to reach different areas.

This is worrying. More and more roads are expected to be built across West Africa in the coming years. If this isn’t regulated, it could dent chimpanzee populations.

Chimpanzees need and prefer forest habitats. But they can also persist in degraded landscapes with limited forest cover, though probably in lower numbers – as long as people tolerate them, and don’t persecute or kill them.

In many areas, the consumption of crops may be a necessity for chimpanzee survival, where wild food resources have been extirpated or are prevented from reaching maturity. Most of the landscape in our case study consists of cultivated fields or fallow areas that can’t regenerate properly.

Their inability to regenerate results from a shortening of fallow periods because local human population growth is increasing the pressure on arable land. Without regeneration, key chimpanzee food species such as wild figs cannot reach maturity. That leaves the apes little choice but target people’s crops.

The study also revealed that distance to swamps was a positive predictor of chimpanzee relative abundance. The closer an area was to a swamp, the more chimpanzees used it. Swamps in this region of West Africa are not exploited by communities for agricultural purposes. They’re the only remaining relatively intact habitat type in the study landscape, aside from mangroves.

This suggests that swamps represent safer areas for the chimpanzees. Forest is key for chimpanzees, but where forest tree cover is minimal – in our study area, it was only 1% of the total area – swamps appear to provide a safe haven from humans for chimpanzees and need to be conserved.

A mix of solutions

Our findings highlight the need for bottom-up approaches that get local communities involved in conservation initiatives.

We propose that local communities should set aside some critical areas currently used by chimpanzees. That would allow wild fruiting trees to regenerate, which could could help reduce chimpanzees’ reliance on crops for food. This approach would also benefit local people when it comes to harvesting sustainably wild resources, such as medicinal plants, that they told us are no longer available.

Improving agricultural productivity and promoting alternative revenue generating activities could also help to improve people-chimpanzee co-existence. Such activities should be rolled out widely across the region to minimise the influx of people understandably attracted by economic opportunities, putting more pressure on the land and resources.

But top-down initiatives will be important, too. Countries could consider national level Strategic Environmental Assessments. These allow policy makers to understand a country’s biodiversity and balance development, conservation and wellbeing objectives, as well as the cumulative impact of large scale development.

Unfortunately, no country in West Africa has such assessments in place. Nor have any nations in the region put in place effective cross-sectorial legal requirements for Social and Environmental Impact Assessments for large scale development projects. Legal frameworks are key: without them, even if an impact assessment exists, it’s of no use as it’s not legally binding.

Luna Cuadrado also contributed to this article.

[Lisbeth]

Chimpanzees are being killed by poachers – researchers like us are on the frontline protecting them

October 2, 2019 11.58am | Alexander Piel, Reader in Primate Ecology-Liverpool John Moores University & Fiona Stewart-Visiting Lecturer in Primatology, Liverpool John Moores University

On a sunny day in early August 2019, screams broke the calm of a national park in East Africa. Researchers ran to find Kidman – an adult female chimpanzee – and her child being attacked by the dogs of poachers. In their desperate attempt to save them, the researchers fought off the dogs and removed a spear that poachers had lodged in Kidman’s back. She died shortly after the researchers had arrived, her infant a few days later.

Primatologists around the world were in awe of the researchers’ heroic efforts, but we were also shocked that such a vicious attack could happen on the Ngogo apes of Kibale Forest in Uganda – one of the world’s best-known community of chimpanzees in one of Africa’s most famous national parks.

Less than two months later, tragedy struck again. On September 13, less than 1,000km south of Kibale Forest in the Issa Valley of Tanzania, researchers found another two chimpanzees being attacked by dogs. Kitu, a two-year old infant, was mauled by four dogs while her mother, Kila, fought another six. The Issa chimpanzees live outside of national park boundaries and only became accustomed to human presence in 2018.

The researchers beat the dogs back, killing one and badly wounding the others. By the time the last dog limped away, Kila was bleeding badly and couldn’t stand. Kitu called despondently from a few trees away, but Kila didn’t look in her direction as she sat struggling to breathe. Eventually she recovered enough to stand and walk through the forest. Our team decided to stay with Kitu, monitoring the infant chimp, and assumed that Kila would return for her in time. They left her late in the day, with no sign of Kila.


Kila was one of an increasing number of chimpanzees to be killed by poachers. Caroline Fryns/GMERC, Author provided

Like humans, infant chimpanzees nurse through the first years of their lives and rely on their mothers for transport and safety to show them what is safe to eat – and who is an ally and who an enemy. While chimpanzees often adopt orphans in their community, we knew Kitu was too young to survive long without Kila.

The next morning, the team found Kitu not far from where they had left her, having travelled in the same direction as her mother the previous day. She was on the ground and seemed to have slept there – something chimpanzees rarely do when they live around predators. They’ve never been observed doing this at Issa. She could only muster groans, too weak to call. She died a few hours after the researchers found her, less than 24 hours since the dog attack.

Chimpanzees led researchers to a feeding tree four days later, under which lay Kila, dead from her injuries.

Scientists on the frontline

Chimpanzees and their cultures are under threat across Africa. Their forest habitats are being converted to farmland while human-transmitted diseases proliferate and decimate populations.

Chimpanzees are also hunted for the bushmeat trade – likely the single most acute threat to their survival in the wild. At Ngogo and Issa, it’s probable that bushmeat hunters were the culprits.

Combined, these threats have pushed chimpanzees onto the IUCN red list of endangered species. In some parts of Africa, chimpanzee populations have declined by 80% since 1990.

Scientists are often forced into being advocates for the species they study – those who study primates often more so than others, simply because we share so much in common with our evolutionary cousins. To protect chimpanzees from the many threats to their survival, we often risk our own safety. Researchers at Issa advise armed patrols and support these teams when in the forest.

Though we couldn’t save Kitu and Kila, the mere presence of researchers here helps protect chimpanzees. Besides collecting data on them, we monitor the forest for other wildlife, including leopards and antelope. We keep an eye on threats such as illegal logging and sponsor Tanzanian postgraduate students – the next generation of chimpanzee researchers.


Kitu was only two years old when she died. Protecting future generations of chimpanzees will take a coordinated effort by governments and researchers. Caroline Fryns/GMERC, Author provided

In all this, we work closely with the district government, and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), a government research body that oversees all research in the country. TAWIRI expends tremendous effort to protect Tanzania’s chimpanzees, recently publishing a national conservation action plan.

We were too late to save Kila and Kitu, but as great ape scientists and conservationists, we’re determined to protect their community. If you would like to help us, please consider contributing to our cause. Our project - GMERC - has a registered non-profit sister group based in California that can receive your support – every dollar, euro, and pound which will go directly to facilitating anti-poaching patrols. Only with increased protection can we minimise the threat imposed by poaching and protect Issa’s chimpanzees.

[Lisbeth]

Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers

by John C. Cannon on 17 December 2019

- 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.

The outlook for eastern Africa’s mountain gorillas is growing brighter, as a recent census released on Dec. 16 shows that the subspecies’ numbers have risen since 2011. Scientists believe there are now at least 1,063 mountain gorillas living in the wild.

Tara Stoinski, the CEO and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, said the results of the latest census were “incredible, given what’s happening to other wildlife populations, and given the high level of threats that they face.”

“It’s a real testament to the level of conservation action that’s happening for these populations,” Stoinski told Mongabay.


A team participates in a training for the census. Image by Winnie Eckardt/Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.A team participates in a training for the census. Image by Winnie Eckardt/Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

In the 1980s, the known population of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the Virunga Mountains had dwindled to just 240 individuals, as lost habitat, hunting, disease and other threats had exacted a costly toll. By late 2018, though, more than three decades of “extreme conservation” involving the day-to-day protection of gorilla families appeared to be having an impact: A 2016 survey of the gorillas living in the Virungas revealed an increase to 604 animals.

At the time, scientists pegged the total number of individuals at more than 1,000, and the IUCN changed the ape’s status on the Red List from critically endangered to endangered.

But a census of the other mountain gorilla population, found further north in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem, hadn’t taken place since 2011, when researchers figured it held 400 gorillas.


A silverback mountain gorilla in Uganda. Image by Skyler Bishop/Gorilla Doctors.

The 2018 census of the Bwindi-Sarambwe population, which straddles the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, found evidence of at least 459 individuals. The 2011 census covered only Uganda’s gorillas. In 2018, however, improved local security allowed teams to include DRC’s Sarambwe Nature Reserve as well.

Mountain gorillas live in three different countries — Uganda, DRC and Rwanda. And the Virunga and Bwindi-Sarambwe populations aren’t connected to each other: Though just 50 kilometers (31 miles) separates the edges of the two ranges, the landscape between them no longer has forest that can support gorillas. The researchers and trackers involved in the census say that the disconnected populations and their transboundary ranges have made cooperation vital to both the protection of the animals and to monitoring efforts.


An infant mountain gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Image courtesy of Gorilla Doctors.

The recent census was “a great example of collaboration between governments, conservation organizations like the Fossey Fund and local communities,” Felix Ndagijimana, who directs the Fossey Fund’s Rwanda programs and the Karisoke Research Center, said in a statement.

In addition to the DRC and Uganda governmental wildlife agencies, the effort, under the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration, included support and funding from more than a dozen conservation NGOs and institutions as well as local communities.

To carry out the census, survey teams walked “reconnaissance” trails, scouring the ground for fecal samples in a “two-sweep” method — one between March and May 2018, and then again between October and December 2018.


Veterinarian Fred Nizeyimana performs an emergency snare removal from adult female mountain gorilla in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Image courtesy of Gorilla Doctors.

Tromping through the gorilla’s habitat is not easy work, Stoinksi said. “It’s called the Bwindi impenetrable forest for a reason.”

“The census work is a tough job — physically demanding, with 12 hours each day of walking through the forest, crossing big ravines and climbing mountains,” Prosper Kaberabose, a Fossey Fund tracker, said in a statement. But by participating in the training before the survey, as well as the census itself, members of the team picked up valuable and marketable skills, Kaberabose said.

The fecal samples — about 2,000 of them — were then sent to the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. Analyses conducted there identified 459 individual gorillas.

“Given ongoing risks to mountain gorillas such as habitat encroachment, potential disease transmission, poaching and civil unrest, this increase should serve as both a celebration and a clarion call to all government, NGO and institutional partners to continue to collaborate in our work to ensure the survival of mountain gorillas,” Kirsten Gilardi, executive director of the Gorilla Doctors and a veterinarian at UC Davis, said in a statement.


An infant mountain gorilla standing on its mother’s back in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Image courtesy of Gorilla Doctors.

The teams also noted signs of other animals, including chimpanzees and elephants. Though these mammal populations weren’t the focus of the study, they appear to be holding steady, in contrast to declines elsewhere.

It may be that the conservation efforts to protect gorillas are also helping to keep other species safe, Stoinski said.

But despite the success of the “extreme conservation” that’s gone into bringing mountain gorillas back from the edge of extinction, Stoinski echoed Gilardi’s call for continued action. Mountain gorillas are still “conservation-dependent,” she said.

“The really exciting news is that they’re increasing,” Stoinski said. “The other side of that is they still face a lot of challenges.”

John Cannon is a staff writer at Mongabay. Find him on Twitter: @johnccannon

[Lisbeth]

https://youtu.be/4bxwB4jD_Eg

[Lisbeth]

Smoked baby chimpanzee on hotel menu, says NGO

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Africa Geographic Editorial in the NEWS DESK post series.



NEWS DESK POST by AG Editorial

A prominent hotel in Kinshasa has been offering smoked baby chimpanzee on their menu, says local NGO Conserv Congo.

Conserv Congo director and former investigative reporter Adams Cassinga was advised by a tourist that the 4-star Beatrice Hotel (website + Facebook + Twitter) in Kinshasa, the capital city of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), offered chimp on the menu, but plans for a sting operation were foiled when staff at the hotel were alerted to the situation, and removed the item from the menu.

According to the menu available at the time, a serving of smoked baby chimpanzee would set customers back US$35, and requires 24-hour notice.


The menu from the Beatrice Hotel showing smoked baby chimp (bébé chimpanzé fumé) for $35

Hotel management subsequently denied the claims on social media, stating that they no longer offer chimpanzee meat to customers, blaming the error on the cook. Cassinga dismisses this explanation, saying “How can they claim to ‘no longer’ offer chimpanzee meat? The hotel is ten years old and it has been illegal to offer chimpanzee meat for 15 years. In any case, we have witnesses who have eaten chimpanzee meat at this hotel”.

Speaking to Africa Geographic, Cassinga said that Beatrice Hotel owner Mr André Kadima has popped up on his radar a few times over the last few years, in connection with allegations of wildlife trafficking, of both dead and live animals. He is a former employee of ICCN (the parastatal in charge of DRC fauna and Flora) and owns a zoo 60 km north of Kinshasa – ‘Kadima’s Pride of Africa.’

Conserv Congo has instituted legal action against Kadima, on the grounds that it is a criminal offence to hunt, injure, kill, sell or buy, gift or detain a protected species of animal or plant, and that the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) falls into the protected species category. Potential punishment is 1-10 years in prison and/or up to US$20,000 fine.

Cassinga said that Conserv Congo recently won the first wildlife trafficking case in DRC, when three bonobo/pygmy chimpanzee (Pan paniscus) traffickers were sentenced to five months in prison and a fine of US$5,000 each. He went on to say that, at any given time in Kinshasa alone, there are at least ten great apes for sale. Red-tailed monkeys are butchered in hundreds daily as bush meat, and many are held as pets and as symbols of wealth and status. He suggests that conservation plans are failing in Africa because of the demand for wild animals, which is based on greed, superstition and bad habit – and had nothing to do with cultural identity.

Consumption of bushmeat across the central African rainforests has escalated due to increasing commercialisation of what was previously a localised food source. Road and trucking networks provided by mining and hardwood forest logging companies facilitate easy access to otherwise remote and inaccessible areas, and meat is now being transported to major African cities and even to Europe and the United States, which host expatriate African communities.

Recently we exposed Instagram influencers Jessica Nabongo and Sal Lavallo for eating pangolin meat in a Gabon restaurant, and promoting the experience to their followers.

The Conserv Congo mission statement is to ‘preserve the biodiversity of the Congo basin’ and they do this primarily via investigating illegal trafficking and assisting the authorities in arresting and prosecuting offenders. They also educate members of the public about wildlife laws, promote alternative livelihoods to poaching and rescue trafficked wildlife, which they place in sanctuaries. In this video founding director Adams Cassinga explains more about Conserv Congo. Cassinga is a Mandela Washington Fellow, Young African Leaders Initiative Fellow, DRC honorary park ranger and a member of the Game Rangers Association of Africa.

How can you help?
Conserv Congo director Adams Cassinga has requested supporters to donate money that will be used to fund the legal action taken against Beatrice Hotel owner Mr André Kadima, who is a wealthy man with significant legal resources at his disposal. Please contact him via this email address: aminiadams16@hotmail.com

[Lisbeth]

We don’t know how many mountain gorillas live in the wild. Here’s why

January 14, 2020 4.10pm | Katerina Guschanski, Associate professor, Uppsala University



A new census – carried out by the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (a coalition of governments, non-profits and conservationists) in 2018 – shows that the population of mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is now at 459, up from 400 in 2011. This could bring the total number count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas. Katerina Guschanski explains that while this is great news, these figures may still not be accurate.

How important are the mountain gorillas of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park to global populations?

Mountain gorillas are one of the two subspecies of eastern gorillas. They are divided into just two populations: one in the Virunga Massif that spans the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and one population that lives in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and the adjacent Sarambwe Nature Reserve in DRC.

The Bwindi population holds a bit less than half of all mountain gorillas in the world, thus its importance for the global survival of these great apes cannot be overstated.

Mountain gorillas receive admirable conservation attention but they’re vulnerable due to habitat encroachment, potential disease transmission from humans, poaching and civil unrest.

Because there are only about 1,000 mountain gorillas left, it’s important that their population size be continuously monitored to evaluate whether, and which, conservation tactics work.

Their populations must keep growing because mountain gorillas have very low genetic diversity. This reduces their ability to adapt to future changes in the environment. For instance, if faced with new diseases, they are extremely susceptible because they don’t have genetic variants that would give them more resistance. Low genetic diversity was implicated in the extinction of some mammals, such as the mammoth.

Continued population growth is also needed to make them less vulnerable to random events, such as habitat destruction through extreme weather events, which could wipe out an entire population.

What can account for a rise in the number of gorillas?

One of the main factors that explains the higher detected number of gorillas is the change in the census technique used. During mountain gorilla censuses researchers collect faecal samples from gorilla nests (where they sleep at night) to genetically identify individuals. Gorillas that are used to human presence can be directly counted.

The teams in the latest census conducted two full systematic sweeps through the forest. They covered the entire region twice from east to west. This is a physically and logistically demanding method, but it’s very thorough.

The previous census, carried out in 2011, also covered the area twice, but only one of these attempts was a full sweep – meaning it started at one end of the forest and systematically progressed towards the other end. The other sweep was disjointed, in terms of how it covered the area and the timing, allowing gorilla groups to easily move and avoid detection.

In Bwindi, from the estimated 459 individuals, 196 are in groups that are used to people and can easily be counted. This means that population estimates are largely based on genetic profiles generated from night nests and so can’t be fully accurate because some will be missed.

Censuses of Virunga mountain gorillas are more accurate because more of their gorillas are used to human presence. In the most recent census, there’s been a rise in their population. It shows an increase from 458 individuals in 2010 to 604 in 2016. Most of these gorillas – 418 out of 604 – belong to groups that are used to human presence, they can be followed daily and easily counted.

The population increases in the Virunga gorillas is strongly attributed to active conservation. This includes continuous monitoring and veterinary attention, such as the removal of snares and treatment of respiratory diseases.

Is this rise a significant number and how accurate do you think it is?

The Bwindi census results were made publicly available in a somewhat unusual way. Scientific studies generally undergo a thorough peer-review before they are published, which has not yet happened for these findings. This means the findings haven’t yet been properly scrutinised and leaves the question about the gorilla’s population size open.

In addition, as mentioned above, the larger number of individuals detected in the 2018 census could be the result of the changed survey method. We therefore can’t make reliable comparisons to previous estimates from the 2011 and the 2006 censuses.

Consider that in the latest census, of the 33 gorilla groups – which weren’t used to the presence of people – only 14 (or 42%) were detected during both sweeps. Similarly, only one of 13 solitary individuals was detected in both sweeps. So, even with full, systematic sweeps, more than half the groups and solitary individuals were missed every time.

This shows we still do not have a good understanding of the actual population size of Bwindi mountain gorillas. The previous surveys are likely to have missed multiple groups and individuals so we can’t derive conclusions about population size changes. If another sweep were to be conducted, researchers could find more individuals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the population has grown.

What we can say is that there are more mountain gorillas than we thought, which is great news.

What can be done to improve census methods?

Using the results of the two census sweeps in Bwindi, researchers will estimate the likely number of gorillas. The accuracy and precision of the estimate depends strongly on how many gorilla groups and individuals were detected in both sweeps.

To make census figures more concrete, more sweeps need to be included so that more individuals are confirmed. This would make the population size estimates more accurate with less uncertainty.

[Lisbeth]

OUR BURNING PLANET

African forest plunder condemns chimpanzees to miserable lives in zoos

By Don Pinnock• 14 August 2020


(Photo: EMS Foundation)

Chimpanzees are our nearest genetic relatives on the tree of life. At this rate, eaten or forced to entertain zoo visitors or wealthy sheikhs, they’re heading for extinction. CITES seems unable to stop the slide and African governments don’t appear to consider it a problem.

If a wild animal has monetary value it’s a prelude to extinction. That’s because the cheapest way to acquire that animal is to poach it. Across Africa, control of poaching is dismal, haphazard, often corrupt and the increase in the value chain from the forest floor to the foreign consumer is eye-watering. As a result, the scale of wildlife extraction is best compared to a vacuum cleaner.

This is very bad news for chimps. They’re endangered and listed as Appendix 1 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meaning they may not be captured in the wild or traded for commercial purposes. But in Central and West Africa’s rain forests they’re high on poacher’s lists and are disappearing at an alarming rate. There are only around 200,000 left and the numbers are dropping fast.



The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that all four subspecies will face between a 50% to 80% decline over the next three generations. A report in 2010 estimated that poachers, villagers and local workers were killing 8,000 chimps, gorillas and bonobos a year for their meat. Under Covid-19 lockdown, this has escalated dramatically. Both a driver and a by-product of this hunting is the capture of baby chimps for sale, mainly to China.

The source

Chimps are dependent on forest ecosystems. They have slow rates of reproduction due to their prolonged maturation and high investment in single (occasionally twin) offspring. Age at first reproduction is late, their young take a long time to develop, with interbirth intervals between four and nine years, depending on the species.

Their populations are, therefore, highly vulnerable to even low levels of offtake and unable to cope with significant and continued killing of individuals. Losses in some subspecies are now so drastic that their viability is in doubt.

Populations are threatened by the combined impacts of habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, poaching, disease and illegal trade. According to the IUCN, 42% of the central chimpanzee geographic range is considered suitable for oil palm, which could become a major threat as most chimps are not within reserves.

In eastern DRC, armed groups involved in artisanal mining are responsible for much of the bushmeat poaching. Loggers build roads into the rainforest and rely on bushmeat to feed workers for whom it has become a necessity. This is leading to “empty forest syndrome”.

There are also major problems with enforcement, public- and private-sector corruption, insufficient resources for investigators in developing and developed countries, local community challenges and abuse of social media and financial service companies.

One of the cruellest among many cruel poaching activities is the marketing of baby chimps. It’s estimated that about 100 are exported each year, though that’s a conservative estimate as many die before their final destination.

This is a species that depends on family ties and they defend their young. To capture a baby, the usual tactic used by poachers is to shoot as many of the adults in a family as possible to ensure they get babies who hang on to their mothers as they climb into the canopy. It’s estimated that poachers kill up to 10 which can then be sold as bushmeat. That constitutes an annual loss of thousands of adults a year.

In the transport of baby chimps, bribes are involved all along the route – police, military, government officials such as CITES Management Authority officials paid to look the other way or issue fake or falsified permits, customs officers and local staff of the airline companies on which the shipments are loaded.

The biggest African trafficking networks, according to a Global Financial Integrity (GFI) investigation, are connected to a Guinean-based company named Doumbouya Pets Company which operates in six Central African countries as well as the Sidibi and Traore families. The exception is buyers from royal families in Gulf states who use their own private planes to pick up shipments.


Young chimp in China threatened by the keeper. (Photo: Karl Ammann)

Chinese zoos only want baby chimps because they can be taught to perform, a violation of CITES Appendix 1 and 2. Adults can be difficult to train and babies are popular with the public in the new Chinese safari parks and zoos.

The profits

The average annual retail value of the international market for live infant and juvenile chimps, according to the GIF investigation, may be up to $6.4-million. Specialised illicit networks, often with direct or tacit support from senior government or military officials, smuggle the products and the money with minimal disguise and adapt to take advantage of new connections to poachers and buyers.

Money changes hands along the supply chains using cash in local currencies, wire transfers that are largely in US dollars and online payment services. The buyer and the seller connect via a platform such as Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp where the seller posts photos of the animals available. They then move to a social media app that facilitates money transfers, particularly China’s WeChat, for the actual transaction or sale.

In the DRC, middlemen who base themselves in Kinshasa get an order and a deposit from a buyer. They call their “collectors” in the interior by mobile to order the “goods” which are sent to them in Kinshasa by river, road or internal flights. Chimpanzees and bonobos from the Mbandaka area get to Kinshasa via boat down the Congo River.



GFI tracked the chimp value chain from village to final destination, exposing retail margins that would be the envy of any stockbroker. A local trader will pay a village-level poacher $5 and $50 for a baby chimp and on-sell it to a middleman for $50 t0 $100. The middleman will have contacts enabling him to get $500 to $1,000 from a local exporter who will be paid between $20,000 and $30,000 by a foreign agent. The final buyer in China or Russia would pay his local agent about $70,000 a chimp if it arrives alive.



The primary foreign buyers of Africa’s great apes are in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and China where they’re used as displays of wealth and commercial entertainment. According to the GFI report, chimps are sometimes given as gifts to VIPs to grease business deals if they are exotic pet collectors. In the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar wealthy families want a baby chimpanzee or baby gorilla in their gardens as status symbols.

The C Scam

Chimps that are second generation captive bred are listed as Appendix 2 and may be exported. They’re listed as “C” on CITES permits. In Central Africa, from where baby chimps are extracted, there are no captive breeding facilities, yet most have permits signed, stamped and marked C.

This is what Swiss wildlife photographer and film-maker Karl Ammann, who has been campaigning against chimp trafficking for many years, calls the C Scam. This is how it works.

CITES has no policing arm, all permits are paper based and not electronic and CITES officials in source countries are as susceptible to bribery as anyone else. A fraudulent export with all the relevant stamps and signatures permit can be purchased under the counter for between $3,000 and $5,000. Given the eventual profits of the trade that’s pocket money.


One of the cruellest among many cruel poaching activities is the marketing of baby chimps. It’s estimated that about 100 are exported each year, though that’s a conservative estimate as many die before their final destination. (Photo: Pxfuel)

According to Ammann, Chinese companies that import wild animals have long-standing links with animal traders in, for example, Guinea. “Those traders say ‘Hey, we’ve got chimpanzees, want some?’ So someone goes to a zoo and asks if they want chimpanzees. And of course they do, because they can use the chimpanzees to perform and make more money.

“Then the animal trader asks the CITES office in Guinea if they can export chimpanzees and of course the answer is no, as the country doesn’t have any captive chimpanzees. But in Africa, you hand over a bit of money and they list the animal as having been raised in captivity and give you the export licence.

“China is equally corrupt. For a CITES I listed specimen, the import permit has to be issued first and the CITES authority of China has to confirm it’s not a wild-caught chimp. They happily do this for a corresponding bribe which generally is a multiple of what it is in Africa.

“Then they just have to get a certain number of buyers together and put in an order to the seller in Africa. In China there are companies that manage the imports – they take care of the entire importation process. It’s all illegal dressed up as legal.”

If CITES rules were strictly enforced it would be very easy to uncover the illegal trade. CITES has lists of approved breeders as well as which animals can be bred and by which bodies. It’s all online. China only started to import chimpanzees in 2007, so it would have been easy to check that.

CITES could invoke Article VIII of its convention which allows it to penalise countries involved in illegal trade and provide for confiscation. But it doesn’t do that because, according to Ammann, the CITES secretariat is involved in covering up a wide range of corrupt and criminal acts.

Countries in West and Central Africa from which the chimps come have no CITES-approved breeders, Ammann points out. So any imports from there simply cannot have been bred in captivity, much less be second generation.

Even in terms of Appendix 2, wild animals may not be exported if it endangers the wild population, and it clearly does in the case of chimps.

It’s not just chimps or China. There have been cases where licences to import four tortoises to the UK have been changed to four elephants, or a permit for 5,000 parrots was altered to import elephants.

Chimps have even been exported from South Africa, a country without an indigenous population. When 18 were sold to China by Mystic Monkeys and Feathers Wildlife Park in Limpopo in 2019, the sale raised concerns among environmental NGOs that they were not captive bred.

In a letter to the Minister of Environment, Barbara Creecy, the EMS Foundation said the export permits were questionable, there was no documentation about the origin of the chimps and two females were pregnant, a fact that would annul any genuine CITES permit.

According to Ammann, South Africa does not have a chimpanzee studbook used to record the origins of chimpanzees and the country’s lax wildlife laws may be providing a useful backdoor for illegal shipments.

He says he has often alerted Chinese officials to illegality in chimp trading. Their reply is that all the information China has comes from the exporter and they accept whatever they’re given. “They say there haven’t been any mistakes on the Chinese side. If there were any mistakes, they were made in the exporting country.”

The destination

China is the major destination for illegally traded chimps, with the others going to the Middle East and Russia. China is opening more and more wildlife parks and there’s a huge demand for zoo attractions like elephants, chimps, gorillas, orangutans and orcas. The legality of the acquisitions seems a secondary consideration, if at all.

“I visited six or seven zoos in China, and my assistant went to others,” said Ammann. “Everywhere we went we saw chimpanzees either locked in cages or performing on stage or used as photo props. There were even different chimp families locked up in a single cage or in solitary. China doesn’t have experts on raising chimpanzees – you can’t put them together like that. Chimps are really suffering in China.”

He says Chinese zoos have adopted a feel-good explanation – they claim they’re saving baby chimps from the horrors of poaching in Africa. The Beijing Wildlife Park had their story carefully worked out in the information board beside the cages (translated from Chinese):

“At the beginning of last century, one chimp family disappeared in Tanzania near a scientist camp. The scientists found government staff had saved these illegally traded chimps from the black market.

“They found their homeland had been wiped out so they decided to keep and raise them in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“After 100 years, South Africa became unstable and owners of chimp farms were attacked and kidnapped. They had to close their farms and asked help from China. Beijing Wildlife Park responded to their trouble immediately and offered the help by receiving their chimps.”

Together with the text are large pictures of chimp bushmeat markets.

This is pure spin in response to bad press about baby chimp capture. Naturally, the zoo’s probable complicity in the deaths depicted was not mentioned.

Chimpanzees are our nearest genetic relatives on the tree of life. At this rate, eaten or forced to entertain zoo visitors or wealthy sheikhs, they’re heading for extinction. CITES seems unable to stop the slide and African governments don’t appear to consider it a problem. Ammann has been warning the world about this for decades, incurring huge personal cost and often placing his life at risk, but few seem to be listening. DM/OBP

[Lisbeth]

[Lisbeth]

More than 25 apes trafficked from Congo recovered in Zimbabwe

BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE IN KINSHASA - 12TH SEPTEMBER 2020 - THE GUARDIAN

At least 26 great apes illegally removed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been seized in Zimbabwe, where four suspected traffickers have been arrested.

Congo’s environment minister, Claude Nyamugabo Bazibuhe, also announced a large seizure of pangolin scales from the country’s north-east.Group of rare Cross River gorillas caught on camera in NigeriaRead more

Congo is one of the world’s last refuges for endangered great apes, such as eastern lowland gorillas and mountain gorillas, while the pangolin is considered the most-trafficked animal worldwide for its scales, which are prized in traditional Chinese medicine.

Two Congolese nationals, a Malawian and a Zambian were arrested on Wednesday during a routine border post check as they entered Zimbabwe with the apes in a truck, Tinashe Farawo, a spokesman for the Zimbabwean parks and wildlife authority said on Friday.Advertisement

Farawo said the primates were being cared for by Zimbabwe officials until they could be returned to Congo.

Nyamugabo Bazibuhe said in a statement that 32 live chimpanzees were recently taken from the Haut-Katanga province in south-eastern Congo, on the border with Zambia.

Traffickers used fake documents to take them out of the country and were destined for South Africa, he said.

“The investigation continues … to identify exactly the specimens” seized in Zimbabwe “before considering their repatriation”, the minister said.

“All great apes – gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees – and pangolins are fully protected.”

On Wednesday, 56kg (125 pounds) of pangolin scales were recovered from a private residence as they were being prepared for export, Congo’s environment minister announced.

They were taken from the Garamba natural reserve, on the border with South Sudan and Uganda.

The scales are used for the treatment of various diseases such as arthritis, ulcers and tumours, despite a lack of scientific proof.

The small animals are thought by some scientists to be the possible host of the novel coronavirus.

They are the most trafficked mammals in the world and seizures of their scales increased tenfold between 2014 and 2018, according to the UN office on drugs and crime.

The world has lost more than two-thirds of its wild animal populations in less than 50 years, mainly due to human activity, the World Wildlife Fund said on Thursday in a hard-hitting report.

Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... n-zimbabwe

[Lisbeth]

For world’s rarest gorillas, camera traps prove pivotal for protection

by Gianluca Cerullo on 23 November 2021

• Cross River gorillas are Africa’s rarest and most endangered ape, once thought to have already been driven to extinction.

• Camera traps have emerged as a critical tool for monitoring the health and population sizes of the subspecies.

• Recent images have shown multiple young gorillas, which conservationists take as a sign that protection measures are working, and which have also helped raise awareness and funding for Cross River gorilla conservation.

MBE MOUNTAINS, Nigeria — Three hop-like steps and a leap, and suddenly Jacob Osang, an eco-guard with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), appears to be levitating above the rainforest floor. With nimble-footed ease, he darts across a moss-covered trunk that bridges a rock-strewn gorge like a fractured bone. But if Osang is fazed by the idea that a chunk of rotting cellulose is all that stands between him and a 15-meter (50-foot) drop, he doesn’t show it.

“It’s my job!” he grins.

Osang calls this part of the forest Natural Bridge, and it’s clear why. The fall of this mega tree, now Osang’s favorite camera-trapping site, has rewired the circuitry of the rainforest. In life, the 40-meter (130-foot) hardwood would have pierced the canopy of Mbe Mountains Community Forest in southeastern Nigeria. For perhaps hundreds of years, its sprawling roots would have been a playground for duikers and porcupines, its gnarled branches a climbing frame for mona and putty-nosed monkeys. In its horizontal days, the fallen sentinel now serves a different purpose: It has become a wildlife walkway, a shortcut across the rugged landscape of the Cross River rainforest.


Jacob Osang sets a camera trap in the Mbe Mountains, a stronghold of the critically endangered Cross River gorilla. A future camera-trapping campaign in Mbe Mountains, Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary and Cross River National Park will attempt to update estimates on the size of Nigeria’s gorilla population. Image by Gianluca Cerullo.

Osang’s camera trap images, set as part of WCS efforts to monitor Mbe Mountains’ unique fauna, have already revealed that Natural Bridge is a highway for hyraxes and a channel for threatened Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees. But Osang thinks it might be something even more special: a causeway for the Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli).

Once considered hunted to extinction, the Cross River Gorilla, “rediscovered” in the 1980s, is the planet’s most endangered subspecies of gorilla and Africa’s rarest ape. Experts estimate that its global population totals fewer than 300 individuals, with a transboundary range spanning the rainforest-blanketed borderlands of Nigeria and Cameroon.

All told, some 100 Cross River gorillas are thought to call Nigeria home. About a third of them reside in Osang’s patrol zone in Mbe Mountains, an 8,500-hectare (21,000-acre) community-owned forest corridor connecting two splotches of gorilla habitat. But these numbers are best guesses. And as conservationists’ efforts to protect this genetically distinct ape have redoubled, camera traps have emerged as a critical tool for monitoring the health and population sizes of the Cross River gorilla.

“It used to be that you only saw signs of Cross River gorilla if you spent days or sometimes weeks walking in the forest,” Osang says. “Now camera traps can tell us where the gorillas are and what they are doing.”


Jacob Osang, a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) eco-guard, replaces and cleans a camera trap at Natural Bridge in Mbe Mountains, a fallen tree trunk that may be used by Cross River gorillas as a shortcut through the forest. Image by Gianluca Cerullo.

Gorillas through the lens

Camera traps have revolutionized the field of wildlife conservation, providing unprecedented insights into the secret lives of some of Earth’s rarest fauna. The motion-triggered devices have been the unsung hero behind everything from a new species of elephant shrew discovered in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, to the first-ever video of the world’s rarest rhino, the Javan rhino, romping in a mud wallow.

The Cross River gorillas’ own camera trap moment came in July 2020, when news outlets worldwide shared a series of momentous photographs captured by one of Osang’s traps in Mbe Mountains. These showed the first-ever photographs of a Cross River gorilla troop, including shots of several baby and adolescent gorillas.

https://youtu.be/x0gBspbsct0

For Inaoyom Imong, director of WCS Nigeria’s Cross River Landscape Project, the camera trap images are evidence that conservation efforts in Mbe Mountains are paying off — and a clear sign of a healthy and reproducing gorilla population bouncing back from the brink

“Photos of Cross River gorillas, especially with so many young, indicate that conservation efforts by WCS, local communities and our government partners are successful despite the many challenges that still remain,” Imong said in an email interview.

Challenges the gorillas continue to face in Mbe range from the ongoing threat of hunting and deforestation to the background specter of illegal logging.


Camera trap photo of a Cross River gorilla. Camera traps are a key tool for monitoring the population size and health of endangered species. In Mbe Mountains, camera traps are used to monitor the effectiveness of gorilla conservation, including projects funded by Rainforest Trust UK, the Darwin Initiative, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the JRS Biodiversity Foundation. Image by WCS Nigeria.

Yet while the groundbreaking family group images grabbed the global headlines, they are just a piece in the puzzle of a much larger effort planned by scientists and rangers to use camera traps to understand the stability and size of Cross River gorilla populations.

Previous estimates of Cross River gorilla population sizes have been based on nest counts made over many years. These nest counts are far from perfect. They are tough to collect over undulating forest terrain, and often miss important details about the breeding status of the gorilla population, as young gorillas sometimes share their mother’s nest.

But with gorilla images now captured every few months, both in Mbe Mountains and neighboring Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary, plans are underway for a coordinated camera-trapping campaign that will serve as an updated baseline for testing just how well conservation measures are protecting the Cross River gorilla.

The camera-trapping campaign will involve deploying 50-100 camera traps in systematic grid-like fashion across the three core gorilla habitats in Afi, Mbe and Cross River National Park.

The increased coverage will also provide a watchful eye over the health of individual gorillas.


Camera trap photos of a silverback gorilla captured in Mbe Mountains, southeastern Nigeria. New gorilla images are captured every few months, leading to new insights about the species. Image by WCS Nigeria.

“In Cameroon, camera traps have shown gorillas with deformed limbs — likely an injury caused by a wire snare,” Andrew Dunn, Nigeria country director for WCS, told Mongabay via email.

Yet beyond the proven monitoring power camera traps provide, conservationists also recognize an unexpected side benefit to the rise of the humble devices: Forest-captured photos have become a lightning rod for attracting conservation funding. And for Cross River gorillas, pixels of primates make people reach for their pockets, it seems.

“Camera trap photos of Cross River gorillas have helped to raise awareness both locally and internationally and to attract greater attention and interest in Cross River gorilla conservation, including funding support,” Imong said.

Dunn agrees that camera trap images of Cross River gorillas have been valuable in securing funding for the subspecies.

“Conservation funding is always needed,” he said. “At one time it was thought that CRG conservation was a lost cause — that the population was too small to be viable and that the threats were simply too great. The camera trap photos have demonstrated that the CRG population is stable/increasing and that, after two decades of efforts by WCS, conservation is working.”


Camera trap photos of Cross River gorillas. Conservationists say images like these have helped raise awareness, and funds. Image by WCS Nigeria.

Mbe Mountains’ most important piece of plastic

Back at Natural Bridge, Osang jumps from the suspended trunk back to solid ground, a camera trap in hand.

Whereas some rangers carry guns and others machetes, Osang carries a paintbrush. With deft brushstrokes, he dislodges an ant colony nestled in the corner of the camera trap and slowly extracts the SD card.

“One month of photographs are stored on this. If there are gorillas captured, then maybe this is the most important piece of plastic in Mbe!” Osang says.

Osang places the SD card safely into a tobacco tin, flings his rucksack over his shoulders, and continues through the forest on his search for Cross River gorillas.


Jacob Osang replaces and cleans a camera trap in Nigeria’s Mbe Mountains. Image by Gianluca Cerullo.