Save 2000 chimpanzees in West Africa

The new Grebo-Krahn National Park in Liberia passed into law!

This new park protects around 970 km2 of primary tropical rainforest and is the heart of the transboundary Taï-Grebo-Sapo Forest Complex between Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia.

The new park provides habitat for several threatened large mammal species including the critically endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), the endangered and endemic pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis), Jentink’s duiker (Cephalophus jentinki) and western red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus badius), as well as the vulnerable forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), Zebra duiker (Cephalophus zebra) and Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana).

The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation would like to thank all partners and donors for making this happen: The Liberian Forestry Development Authority (especially Hon. Darlington S. Tuagben, Borwen L. Sayon, Theo Freeman, Jerry G. Yonmah, Blamah Goll, Abednego Gbarway, and Joseph Greene), the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia (especially Michael F. Garbo), the President Madam Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the Parliament of the Republic of Liberia, the Environmental Protection Agency, all conservation partners in Liberia, all the local communities, Rainforest Rescue, Wientjes/World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), GlobalGiving, Furuviksparken, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) through the Great Ape Conservation Fund, GIZ/Ambero, KfW/AHT and all other donors.

Eco-guards are young people from the villages bordering the Cavally Classified Forest in Côte d’Ivoire, committed to protect their forest. Today, the Cavally Classified Forest is one of the last remaining natural forests in Côte d'Ivoire, where there is still intense forest cover and wildlife such as chimpanzees, classified as Critically Endangered by IUCN. The main threat to this forest remains the cultivation of cocoa, which causes the loss of forest cover and of wildlife habitat.
The eco-guards are regularly trained by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) on the use of guidance materials such as GPS and compasses, on information gathering methodology and data collection. They accompany the field missions organized by “Société pour le Développement des Forêts” (SODEFOR, the national authority in charge of the classified forests). Eco-guards record the areas cleared for cocoa farming, abandoned cocoa farms and intact forest in a systematic way. Furthermore, they collect all signs of illegal human activities such as poaching and mining, and the presence of large mammals in Cavally Classified Forest.
This monitoring developed by WCF, measures the evolution of the degradation state of the Cavally Classified Forest and allows orienting the management measures for the future. Between March and June 2017, monitoring was done on 1,025 ha of forest. The results show that in the surveyed area, which is under huge agricultural pressure, the proportion of intact forest is 61.80%, clearing represents 0.33%, plantations 35.71%, and 2.15% of abandoned plantations were identified. The number of abandoned plantations is good indicator for assessing the impact of law enforcement actions done by SODEFOR.
WCF urgently needs additional support for the protection of the last remaining classified forest in Côte d’Ivoire – Cavally!