Bushmeat

The Tchimpounga Sanctuary is on the front line in the battle to save the Congo's chimpanzees. Tchimpounga takes in confiscated chimps and orphans rescued from the bushmeat trade.

Bushmeat is the name given to any wild animal, be it a rat, elephant or chimpanzee, caught and killed for food. The trade is illegal, unsustainable and cruel. Surprisingly, it is fuelled not by starving people but by greed. It is tightly linked to the logging industry:- hunters follow the timber companies when they move into new patches of forest. The wood is exported and the bushmeat is sent to city markets, where it is regarded as a luxury and fetches high prices. Because of the high demand, the bushmeat trade is considered perhaps the greatest threat to Africa's primates and other large animals. It gets worse. Poachers try to find female chimpanzees carrying babies. If they can catch a mother with a baby, they get two animals instead of one. However, by robbing the chimpanzee population of its mothers and young, the hunters are driving the apes ever closer to extinction.

Since 1992, Tchimpounga has worked with the Congolese Authorities to stop this atrocity. Situated on the edge of a rainforest, Tchimpounga provides the rescued chimpanzees with care, security and the company of others. The Sanctuary consists of a 65-acre site, part savannah and part rainforest, with two large enclosures surrounded by a solar powered electric fence. The chimpanzees' house has a large central area, with separate but interconnecting night accommodation, and it opens directly in to the two forest enclosures. In 1996, JGI started a ranger patrol programme in the adjoining 18 000 acre reserve to protect the forest and the wild chimpanzees who still live there.

Tchimpounga is quite literally life saving. Chimps often arrive sick, starving and terrified. At the Sanctuary, they are nursed back to health, and integrated into social groups where they can display their natural behaviour and begin to live normal lives again.

Currently, Tchimpounga looks after over 100 chimps, but more orphans continue to arrive. This is one of the largest and most demanding projects that JGI-UK supports. You can help by adopting a chimp.