Chimpanzee News
Central Africa: expert blames aids, ebola to bushmeat
06-06-2008 - The Citizen
Consumption of bush meat may have fuelled the emergence of viral diseases including HIV/Aids and Ebola, among people in the Congo basin, a scientist warned yesterday.
Dr John B. Flynn, director of Usaid-supported Central Africa regional programme for the environment said there is evidence that HIV has been transmitted to humans by wild chimpanzees, one of the most hunted animals inthe Congo basin. He told the last session of the 8th Sullivan Summit that medical researchers were concerned that bush meat trade could not only eliminate primate pupulations in the area, but could also spread HIV/Aids, Ebola, monkey fox and related hemorrhagic fevers.
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Researchers find human virus in chimpanzees
03-06-2008 - Newswise
After studying chimpanzees in the wilds of Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park for the past year as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Virginia Tech researcher Dr. Taranjit Kaur and her team have produced powerful scientific evidence that chimpanzees are becoming sick from viral infectious diseases they have likely contracted from humans.
In an article to be published in the August issue (available on-line in June) of the American Journal of Primatology featuring a special section on “Disease Transmission, Ecosystems Health and Great Apes Research,” Dr. Kaur, an assistant professor in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology at Virginia Tech, will report the results of extensive field studies conducted in the jungles of Africa.
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Did walking on two feet begin with a shuffle?
30-05-2008 - Science Daily
Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of today's primates, including humans, did something novel. While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid spotted another juicy morsel in a nearby shrub and began shuffling toward it instead of dropping on all fours, crawling to the shrub and standing again. A number of reasons have been proposed for the development of bipedal behavior, or walking on two feet, and now researchers from the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University have developed a mathematical model that suggests shuffling emerged as a precursor to walking as a way of saving metabolic energy. |
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Should chimps be given human rights?
29-05-2008 - FoxNews
Matthew, a 26-year-old chimp, is headed to court in Europe as part of a human effort to classify him as a person. Beyond the legal challenges, anthropologists say chimpanzees are not humans, though without a clear definition of what it means to be human, backing that claim up is a challenge perhaps fit for some great courtroom drama. Animal rights activist and teacher Paula Stibbe, along with the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories (AAAF), says she wants the chimpanzee, named Matthew Hiasl Pan, declared a person. |
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Nothing beats a home-cooked meal – even for apes
28-05-2008 - NewScientist
Chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans all seem to prefer cooked food to raw forms of meat, sweet potatoes and carrots, a team of anthropologists has found.
This suggests that our ancestors had an innate preference for cooked meals, and probably started cooking as soon as they wielded fire, says Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, who led the new study.
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How are humans unique?
25-05-2008 - The New York Time
Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals. It is thus with decidedly mixed feelings that we regard the frequent reports that activities once thought to be uniquely human are also performed by other species: chimpanzees who make and use tools, parrots who use language, ants who teach. Is there anything left?
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Climbing as easy as walking for small primates
15-05-2008 - National Geographic News
Climbing trees is no sweat for small primates, a new study reveals.
Squirrel monkeys, lemurs, and other tiny species use no more energy climbing vertically than they do walking on the ground. But large primates, including humans, tend to remain terrestrial for good reason.
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Chimps agree: a bird in hand is worth two in the bush
14-05-2008 - Discovermagazine
When it comes to trade, chimps are far from venture capitalists. Our closest relatives almost always prefer a sure bet, according to a recent study, choosing value in hand over risk for higher returns. The finding brings us closer to understanding chimps’ trading habits and gives us precious insight into how trade, an essential cooperative behavior, works for humans.
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A limited sanctuary
09-05-2008 - National Post
Arriving at Canada's only chimpanzee sanctuary early one recent morning, it was tempting to imagine a primate Shangri-La. As commuters from the nearby bedroom community drove by on their way to Montreal, ducks floated on a pond and a dog barked. Then from somewhere down the long driveway, a chimpanzee's hoot pierced the air. Ten years ago, it was local residents who were howling when they learned that eight of the 15 chimpanzees that had arrived at the Fauna Foundation in Carignan from a U.S. laboratory had been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There were calls to shut the facility down and rumours that a mosquito bite would be enough to transmit the deadly disease. The neighbouring school instituted chimp drills to protect children from marauding apes in the event of an escape. |
a chimpanzee at the Fauna Foundation, a sanctuary for former biomedical research chimps near Chambley Quebec, sits near a bed. |
Ape Genius reveals depth of animal intelligence
02-05-2008 - Telegraph
Chimpanzees in Senegal make and sharpen spears with their teeth to go hunting. Like our own ancestors they have learned to use tools to kill their quarry more effectively. They use their colossal strength to thrust their spears into holes in trees where they suspect nocturnal bushbabies are sleeping. Anthropologist Jill Pruetz believes she has made a landmark discovery - a species other than humans learning - and passing on - the skills to make a lethal weapon. |
Ape genius: A chimp turns a handle on an experiment device (left) and a chimp examining red cups |
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Orangutan goes fishing with sharpened stick
28-04-2008 - Telegraph
In a sight never previously witnessed an orangutan uses a sharpened stick to try and spear fish. The hugely powerful creature uses fingers and toes to anchor himself on the branches of a tree overhanging the water. The male orang lives in a sanctuary on the island of Kaja in Borneo which rescues animals driven out of their traditional rainforest home by loggers and palm oil plantation owners. |
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The great apes, which share 97 per cent of its genes with humans, are routinely slaughtered if they get in the way of workers. Often they are butchered and their meat sold in shops with the animal's decapitated head used as an adornment. |
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Uganda: saving country's endangered apes from extinction
22-04-2008 - The monitor
Apes are on the verge of extinction due to extreme poaching for bush meat and their global demand to be used for scientific research, but there are initiatives to save the endangered species. There are increasingly necessitated efforts to help protect the great endangered chimpanzees and gorillas that are likely to become extinct because of their increasing demand globally.
The apes are poached for bush meat while others are sold to various countries to conduct scientific research because of their comparable features with man. A visit to the established Ngamba island chimpanzee sanctuary, put up to care for the chimpanzees being rescued within Uganda, calls for more devoted efforts to keep the few remaining chimpanzee species that are regularly hunted, safe.
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World's rarest gorillas gain new refuge
22-04-2008 - National Geographic News
The rarest gorillas in the world are being protected in a new sanctuary nestled in the mountains of Cameroon, the government announced recently. A community of 20 Cross River gorillas now live in the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary, the first exclusively dedicated to this subspecies of western lowland gorilla. The apes are listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union: As few as 250 to 300 survive. The animals are scattered over 11 mountain and forest sites in Cameroon and Nigeria, driven to the verge of extinction by hunting and loss of habitat. Cameroonian Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni announced the Kagwene sanctuary in a decree on April 3. |
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Almost Human
01-04-2008 - National Geographic
On the savannas of Senegal, chimpanzees are hunting bush babies with spearlike sticks. This hothouse of chimp "technology" offers clues to our own evolution. [...] They're savanna-woodland chimps, found in eastern Senegal and across the border in western Mali. Unlike their better-known rain forest kin, savanna-woodland chimps spend most of their day on the ground. There is no canopy here. The trees are low and grow sparsely. It's an environment very much like the open, scratchy terrain where early humans evolved. For this reason, chimpanzee communities like the Fongoli group—named for a stream that runs through its range—are uniquely valuable to scientists who study the origins of our species. |
Photo Credit: Frans Lanting |
Vaccine for Ebola virus successful in primates
31-03-2008 - ScienceDaily
One of the world's deadliest diseases, caused by the Ebola virus, may finally be preventable thanks to US and Canadian researchers, who have successfully tested several Ebola vaccines in primates and are now looking to adapt them for human use.
Dr Anthony Sanchez, from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia is presenting an overview of Ebola vaccine development March 31, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting.
"The biothreat posed by Ebola virus cannot be overlooked. We are seeing more and more naturally occurring human outbreaks of this deadly disease. With worldwide air travel and tourism the virus can now be transported to and from remote regions of the world. And it has huge potential as a possible weapon of bioterrorism", says Dr Sanchez. "We desperately need a protective vaccine."
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Humans 'learnt to gamble from chimps'
26-03-2008 - Telegraph
Humans may have inherited their propensity to gamble from chimpanzees, scientists say. In a study, common chimpanzees were found to be more likely to take risks in seeking food than bonobos, their endangered close relative found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Researchers say the results demonstrate how species' food-gathering techniques and experiences shape how willing they are to engage in risky behaviour. |
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Chimpanzees (left) took risks in the study and bonobos (right) played it safe |
Who's bad? chimps figure it out by observation
26-03-2008 - ScienceDaily
Chimpanzees make judgments about the actions and dispositions of strangers by observing others’ behavior and interactions in different situations. Specifically, chimpanzees show an ability to recognize certain behavioral traits and make assumptions about the presence or absence of these traits in strangers in similar situations thereafter. These findings are by Dr. Francys Subiaul - from the George Washington University in Washington DC - and his team. Character judgments are an essential feature of cooperative exchanges between humans, and we use them to predict future behavioral interactions. A system for attributing reputation is therefore expected in any species which needs to assess the behavior of others and to predict the outcomes of future interactions. |
(Credit: iStockphoto/Gary Wales) |
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Scientists say oldest primate walked upright
21-03-2008 - VOA News
Scientists have concluded that the world's oldest primate fossil known as the Millennium Ancestor belongs to a group that includes prehistoric humans rather than apes. Investigators studying the remains have determined that the six-million-year-old species walked upright, a characteristic that separated human ancestors from apes. VOA's Jessica Berman reports. Ever since the fossil of the six million year old Millennium Ancestor was discovered in Kenya by French paleoanthropologists in 2000, scientists have debated whether it belonged to the family of prehistoric apes or humans.An independent team of researchers led by Brian Richmond of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. studied the upper thighbone of the Millennium Ancestor. |
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| Shape of fossil femur (thigh bone, center) from Kenya shows our early ancestors were already adapted to upright walking by 6 million years ago | |
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Congo gorilla murder charges
21-03-08 - HeraldSun
A top park ranger charged with protecting some of the world's last remaining mountain gorillas has been arrested for allegedly masterminding a mass killing of them. Honore Mashagiro was a director of the Virunga National Park when he allegedly promoted the destruction of the gorillas' habitat for charcoal to make money, international conservation group WildlifeDirect said. "This threatened the gorilla habitat so, when the rangers tried to protect the forest, he allegedly orchestrated the gorilla massacres to discourage them," the group said. Mr Mashagiro is believed to be the chief suspect behind the killing of the Rugendo gorilla family, whose remains were found last July. |
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Rwanda conservation effort to link isolated chimps to distant forest
20-03-08 - ScienceDaily
A group of some 15 chimpanzees isolated in a pocket of Rwandan rain forest will have a greater range -- and, thus, greater chances for survival -- thanks to one of Africa's most ambitious forest restoration and ecological research efforts ever. Organizers of the project, named the Rwandan National Conservation Park, said that a 30-mile (50km) tree corridor will be planted to connect the Gishwati Forest Reserve, the chimpanzees' home range, to Nyungwe National Park. |
UC Santa Cruz anthropologists confirm link between diet and teeth of chimpanzees and orangutans
17-03-08 - UC Santa Cruz
For the first time, anthropologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have measured the mechanical properties of foods eaten in the wild by orangutans and chimpanzees to test assumptions about the link between diet and the teeth of primates. Their findings confirm what researchers have assumed, providing the first data that correlates the thick enamel of orangutans with a diet of hard foods. The results have significant implications for the study of the diet of early human ancestors, because anthropologists have long noted similarities between the teeth of hominids and orangutans, which appear to have independently evolved thickly enameled teeth that are well-adapted to the consumption of hard or gritty foods. |
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Cameroon's bushmeat dilemma
14-03-2008 - BBCNews
Help! I am in an unfamiliar city in Cameroon, and I am being chased across a busy market by an angry group of women holding smoked monkeys.As I get to the road, I wonder if this is just some gruesome Freudian nightmare about carnivorous guilt, but the taxi I jump into, my heart beating like a drum, is real and drives off at speed. We have come here to make a film about the bushmeat crisis in central West Africa, which is causing an ecological catastrophe and aiding zoonosis - whereby animal diseases jump species to humans. The scale of the problem is huge. Bushmeat, mainly rodents, antelopes, monkeys and primates, makes up a huge proportion of the diet here - around 60-80% of all protein eaten and some scientists predict that the great apes will be wiped out within 20 years. |
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Using chimps to promote your products is wrong, Jane Goodall tells advertisers
14-03-08 - Daily Mail
Using chimps to promote products like PG Tips is wrong and should be banned, a leading group of scientists has claimed. The primatologists - including the world-famous Jane Goodall - have attacked the advertising industry for exploiting chimps as "frivolous sub-humans", objects of ridicule and fun that can be exploited for commercial gain.
The reality is that chimps are every bit as endangered as the orang-utan and the gorilla, they say - but such "false advertising" leads people to believe chimpanzees are in no danger.
A survey printed in the journal Science showed that of 1,000 zoo visitors, more than 90 per cent knew that gorillas and orang-utans were endangered - but only 66 per cent realised chimps were.
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Rwanda: ORTPN moves to curb wildlife domestication
29-02-08 - The New Times
The Office of Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN) has stepped up efforts to curb increasing cases of domestication of wild animals and birds. The move comes hot on the heels of an operation in which ORTPN earlier this month recovered an eight-year old male chimpanzee in a Kigali City home.
The ape is believed to have been got from a natural habitat. And now the tourism and wildlife board says it will seek to enforce international conventions on the protection of wildlife to curb to practice. It blamed the illegal domestication of wildlife on people's defiance of international conventions and national policies outlawing the practice. Such instruments include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a treaty protecting wildlife from extinction.
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What separates you from chimps
28-02-2008 - LiveScience
Scientists keep finding more similarities between humans and chimps. They share most of our genes, they seem to be able to handle tools, and they grasp some English pretty well, too. Now researchers have found that we share a similar brain pattern when communicating.
Broca’s area, located in the part of the human brain known as the inferior frontal gyrus, has been shown to be critical for human speech and sign language. When a person speaks, or even plans to say something, this region lights up with activity.
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Three countries in pact to save mountain gorillas
21-02-2008 - The Guardian
Efforts to protect the critically endangered mountain gorilla received a big boost yesterday when Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo agreed to cooperate on a 10-year conservation plan for the animals. Only 720 mountain gorillas remain in the wild, all of them in the misty hills of central Africa where the three countries' borders meet. In the past 14 months, at least 10 gorillas have been killed in Congo's Virunga park by rebel fighters and people involved in the illegal charcoal trade.
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A mountain gorilla in Parc Nacional des Volcans, Rwanda. Photo: Andy Rouse/Corbis |
Key 'impact hunters' catalyze hunting among male chimpanzees
01-02-2008 - Eurekalert
While hunting among chimpanzees is a group effort, key males, known as “impact hunters” are highly influential within the group. They are more likely to initiate a hunt, and hunts rarely occur in their absence, according to a new study. The findings, which appear in the current issue of Animal Behaviour, shed light on how and why some animals cooperate to hunt for food, and how individual variation among chimpanzees contributes to collective predation.
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Ngamba Island - A haven for chimps
31-01-2008 - New Vision
In Ngamba Island, you will glide to a world where every ordinary thing takes on the extraordinary. Surrounded by the Lake Victoria waters, Ngamba Island has been turned into a sanctuary for chimpanzees, which are mainly rescued by the Uganda Wildlife Authority from people who keep them in confinement or after being wounded by insurgents in the Congo Forest. This island is 23km from Entebbe town.
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Villagers resist environmentalists around Guinea's Mount Nimba
30-01-2008 - Voice of America
Environmentalists trying to save chimpanzees at a UNESCO World Heritage protected area in Guinea are facing resistance from villagers who say their needs are being ignored. VOA's Nico Colombant reports from the Mount Nimba nature reserve, in eastern Guinea, about the difficult balance between environmental and economic concerns. Scientists and guides marvel as one of the 13 remaining chimpanzees from Bossou does an acrobatic treetop demonstration of quickly picking berries from one branch and the next. After the impressive display, scientist Sakho Djemory walks toward plants he has been cultivating. Djemory has been arranging a natural corridor of plants chimpanzees like to eat. |
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You are what you eat: some differences between humans and chimpanzees traced to diet
03-02-2008 - ScienceDaily
Humans consume a distinct diet compared to other apes. Not only do we consume much more meat and fat, but we also cook our food. It has been hypothesized that adopting these dietary patterns played a key role during human evolution. However, to date, the influence of diet on the physiological and genetic differences between humans and other apes has not been widely examined. By feeding laboratory mice different human and chimp diets over a mere two week period, researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, were able to reconstruct some of the physiological and genetic differences observed between humans and chimpanzees. |
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Great apes endangered by human viruses
26-01-2008 - ScienceDaily
The opening of gorillas and chimpanzees reserves for tourism is often portrayed as the key to conserving these endangered great apes. There are also however serious concerns that tourism may expose wild apes to infection by virulent human diseases.
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Uganda: chimpanzee recovered
24-01-2008 - New Vision
A baby chimpanzee believed to be less than two-years-old has been impounded, two weeks after a suspected trafficker in Hoima was reportedly looking for chimps to buy at sh2m each.
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Lack of meat for refugees causing large scale poaching
22-01-2008 - Traffic
The lack of meat in refugee rations in East Africa is causing a flourishing illegal trade in wild meat, threatening wildlife populations and creating a food security issue for rural communities, reveals a new report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. |
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Chimpanzees may build their 'cultures' in a similar way to humans
11-01-2008 - ScienceDaily
Historically, scientists believed that behavioural differences between colonies of chimpanzees were due to variations in genetics. A team at Liverpool, however, has now discovered that variations in behaviour are down to chimpanzees migrating to other colonies, proving that they build their 'cultures' in a similar way to humans. Primatologist, Dr Stephen Lycett, explains: "We knew there were behavioural differences between chimpanzee colonies, but nobody really knew why. It was assumed that young chimpanzees developed certain behavioural characteristics from the genes passed down from their parents, but there was no evidence to clearly support this. It was also thought that because behaviour was dictated by biology, chimpanzees did not have a 'culture' in the same way that humans do." |
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Why do chimps eat dirt?
10-01-2008 - Nature
Apes might eat soil to activate anti-malarial plants. Chimpanzees in Uganda have been spotted eating dirt along with fistfuls of leaves. This might help to increase the plants' anti-malarial properties, say researchers. Many animals, including humans, are known to deliberately eat soil, a practice called geophagy. Though the animals and people might not be aware of it, the main reason for this is that munching on dirt can have health benefits. Soil contains scarce minerals, such as iron, and can counter diarrhea, absorb toxins, and facilitate digestion. Eating earth can also reduce hunger pangs during famine. Now, it seems that soil might also boost the pharmaceutical properties of foods. |
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Ancient chimpanzee tool use
09-01-2008 - Archaeology
Archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary have uncovered the first known ancient chimpanzee archaeological site, a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans. The discovery shows that stone tool use is not a behavior that chimpanzees learned recently by watching the farmers who live in the area, as some skeptics believe. Mercader thinks that humans and chimpanzees may have inherited stone tool use from an ancestral species of ape that lived as long as 14 million years ago. |
(Courtesy Paco Bertolani) |
![[image]](javascript:bigImage('http://www.archaeology.org/image.php?page=0801/topten/jpegs/chimpanzee.jpg'))
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Wild chimpanzees appear not to regularly experience menopause
19-12-2007 - ScienceDaily
Together with recent data from wild gorillas and orangutans, the finding suggests that human females are rare or even unique among primates in experiencing a lengthy post-reproductive lifespan. "We find no evidence that menopause is common among wild chimpanzee populations," says lead author Melissa Emery Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in anthropology at Harvard University. "While some female chimpanzees do technically outlive their fertility, it's not at all uncommon for individuals in their 40s and 50s -- quite elderly for wild chimpanzees -- to remain reproductively active."
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Chimps outperform humans at memory task
03-12-07 - NewScientist
Young chimps can beat adult humans in a task involving remembering numbers, reveals a new study. It is the first time chimps – and young ones, at that – have outperformed humans at a cognitive task.
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Chimpanzees declining in parks
18-11-2007 - The New Vision Uganda
The population of chimpanzees in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, is declining as a result of hunting by the surrounding communities, an official has said.
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Humans and chimps differ at level of gene splicing
14-11-2007 - ScienceDaily
Researchers are closer to understanding why humans differ so greatly from chimpanzees in the way they look, behave, think, and fight off disease, despite having genes that are nearly 99% identical.
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Chimps dig tubers, tool study finds
13/11/2007 - National Geographic News
The first evidence has been found that chimps use tools to dig for tubers, roots, and bulbs to eat. The discovery may shed light on how early human ancestors survived the transition from food-rich forests to drier habitats, a new study says. Anthropologist Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar observed chimpanzees digging in the Ugalla Forest Reserve of western Tanzania. The arid woodland savanna is home to a small population of chimps that have adapted to life beyond their species' typical forest habitat. |
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New genetic lineage of ebola virus discovered in great apes
12/11/2007 - ScienceDaily
The Zaire species of Ebolavirus (ZEBOV) remains the most virulent of the various known species. It alone is responsible for 88% of human deaths from haemorrhagic fever recorded since Ebola's discovery in 1976. It was moreover the species involved in the two-month long epidemic which raged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In spite of the mass of scientific data collected during previous epidemics, the international scientific community has still not succeeded in determining the evolutionary development of the Ebolavirus and more particularly that of ZEBOV.
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"Signing" chimp Washoe broke language barrier
01/11/2007 - The Seattle Times
Washoe died in Ellensburg at 42. A world-famous chimpanzee believed to be the first animal to learn a human language died at Central Washington University in Ellensburg Tuesday night. Washoe, who was 42 years old, could use about 250 distinctive American Sign Language signs, said Deborah Fouts, director of the university's Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, where Washoe lived. Fouts said Washoe was continuing to communicate on the day of her death. |
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West and central african primates imperiled by hunting, habitat loss
29/10/2007 - VOICE OF AMERICA
A new World Conservation Union report says a large number of the world's endangered primates are at risk of extinction in West and Central African countries. Experts say hunting for bushmeat is threatening the animals' survival in poor countries. Kari Barber has more from VOA's bureau in Dakar.
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Chimps exaggerate calls for help
15/10/2007 - BBC NEWS
Chimpanzees under attack exaggerate their screams to get help from higher ranking group members, researchers from Fife have discovered. The study found primates produce high-pitched and prolonged screams when they were the victims of severe aggression such as beating. Their cries were exaggerated if there was another higher-ranking chimp in the area who could challenge the aggressor. |
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Great apes continue to face threat of extinction
15/09/2007 - IUCN
Wild chimpanzee populations have been reduced significantly in the last 20 to 30 years, and face considerable threat ahead, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, released in late September with little good news.
The chimpanzee continues to be listed as "endangered," which has been its classification since 1996. Chief threats include poaching, disease and habitat destruction through logging, mining and other resource exploitation. There was even worse news about other great apes, particularly the Western Gorilla, which is now listed as "critically endangered," suffering declines due to the commercial bushmeat trade and Ebola virus. Its population has declined by more than 60 percent in the last 20 to 25 years, according to the List. Sumatran Orangutans are also critically endangered.
"The news is not good, but we know based on experience that species can be brought back even from the very brink. We must redouble our efforts to ensure that our children and their children will enjoy a future with great apes not only surviving but thriving in the wild," said Dr. Jane Goodall. "It's critical to work in true partnership with local communities in Africa. This is the approach of the Jane Goodall Institute as we restore and protect great ape habitat while helping to forge sustainable futures for communities."
JGI works to preserve great apes, with an emphasis on chimpanzees, through a variety of means including community-centered conservation, sanctuaries for orphaned chimpanzees, and the ongoing research at Gombe which helps inform conservation efforts as well as promote public care and concern for chimpanzees.
