Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project

We have had great chimpanzee news over the past several months, and our projects that benefit the people that live alongside the Fongoli chimpanzees are doing well also!

Neighbor Ape continues to fund costs associated with schools for children in the area where the Fongoli chimpanzees live. We provide a year's worth of school supplies to the village of Djendji, annually. Djendji is the biggest village in the area, with several hundred people. Children from surrounding villages, such as Petit Oubadji, also attend school in Djendji. We also help students that live in villages around the Kedougou area attend school in the city. The dormitory that Neighbor Ape helped fund is still running and is almost 10 years old! Numerous students have lived at the dormitory and attended school in Kedougou. Some have even then gone on to attend university in Dakar!

We also continue to provide grants to help with health care costs to people living in the area. While health care is relatively inexpensive in southeastern Senegal, it is still prohibitively expensive for most people living in the rural areas. Malaria is endemic and a leading cause of mortality. We are able to provide malaria curatives for most people in the area and have also provided mosquito nets as well.

In chimpanzee news, adult female Lucille has had her seventh infant! It is a male, and we have provided a list of 24 names to the Fongoli field team to choose from! Donors to specific fundraising events are asked to provide a name of their choice, and we incude these names on our master list. Even if a name isn't chosen immediately, it may be chosen at a later date. The next female we think that will give birth is young Eva. She has had two infants already, and her youngest - Ella - is four years old. The Fongoli chimpanzees give birth about every four years.

Without the generous support of donors like yourself, we would not be able to conserve chimpanzees and provide for the wellbeing of the people that live alongside them.

Pant hoots of thanks!

Links:

• Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project website

I was a able to make a short visit to Fongoli in early October 2023. I spent a brief time with the chimpanzees but considerably more time with the Fongoli team, as we were able to attend the Francophone Primatology Meetings in Dakar, Senegal. We listened to many interesting and important presentations about nonhuman primates around the world and, specifically, in Africa. We were able to make some important connections with conservationists across the globe as well. Dr. Papa Ibnou Ndiaye, one of the partners of the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project, almost singlehandedly organized the conference, and it really advanced collaboration among Senegalese students, scientists and conservationists, in particular.

Back at Fongoli, it is the late rainy season, so chimpanzee visibility is very low! I only had one day to spend out with the chimps, and I probably actually saw a chimp for an hour, but it was well worth it! The first chimp I saw was Pistache, now an adolescent male, who spends quite a bit of time with the lady chimps. He met up with recent transfer Koundibie, who joined the Fongoli group in 2022, and they then joined most of the Fongoli chimpanzee community. I was able to get at least a glimpse at Dawson, Louis, Jumkin and K.L. 

While the chimpanzee group numbers 34 right now, which is above our longterm average of 32 chimpanzees (from 2006-2023), we still worry about the impact that the continuing gold rush has on these Critically Endangered apes' fate. During the rainy season, it is easy to overlook all of the disturbance that the gold rush has brought to the Fongoli area, but it is very apparent in the dry season, when people move back out to the artisinal gold mines. Fortunately, there is a community ranger program that Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project assistant director, Dr. Landing Badji took a lead role in organizing. Dr. Badji is now doing a post-doc at York University in Canada, where he is concentrating on understanding how stresses of the Fongoli chimpanzees' environment influence their health, via the study of hormones. He is also studying medicinal plant use by the Fongoli chimps and working with local people in the area to understand their use of medicinal plants as well.

The Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project continues its emphasis on chimpanzee and human health by hosting Texas State University doctoral students, Katie Gerstner and Carson Black, who are researching the influence of different variables on the Fongoli chimpanzee gut microbiome. The microbiome influences many aspects of an organism's health and behavior, which we are just now learning more and more about. At Fongoli, they are examining such things as the effects of mercury (used to process gold), extreme seasonality, and anthropogenic (or human-related) disturbances on the chimpanzees' gut microbiomes. 

With your generous support, we hope to endow the Fongoli project so that infrastructure costs can be guaranteed in perpetuity, which will enable more Senegalese and other African country students to become involved in the important longterm scientific research done at Fongoli. More importantly, it will help future generations conserve these incredible but critically endangered apes. Thank you! 

Links:

• Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project website