Sustainability in the Congo Republic

Our colleagues in the Congo Republic have been celebrating Gregoire's 63rd birthday. As part of the birthday celebrations, they launched a travelling exhibition about the world famous chimpanzee and all the staff at Tchimpounga helped him celebrate in fine style.

The events have been extensively covered by the TV, radio and newspapers in the Congo Republic. Television channels showed many of the videos made by JGI at Tchimpounga, as well as footage from the International Conservation and Education Fund (INCEF).

The events in Pointe Noire ran for a week, before the JGI Education Team began a tour in the schools of Pointe Noire with posters, videos and other educational materials.

JGI were given extensive support by the government in the Kouilou Region - including the Prefect (who opened the event), the Departmental Director, who gave a presentation on forest exploitation and the importance of the protection of the forest for bio-diversity, the Director of Fauna and Protected Areas who presented on the importance of law enforcement, and the Director of the Ministry of Education who presented on the importance of conservation education, and the need to include this into the formal curriculum, as practiced by Roots & Shoots.

Further presentations were made by the President of the bushmeat markets in Pointe Noire, the President of the Taxi Association – with whom JGI have undertaken an anti-bushmeat sticker campaign - and the President of the committee for hunters in the Kouilou region.

JGI sought to work with other conservation partners in the field including two other "local" great ape projects - Lola y Bonobo, and the Projet Protection des Gorilles, who came to Pointe Noire and gave presentations on their projects too.

All the JGI team in Pointe Noire, Tchimpounga and the education team played a role in the campaign which endeavours to educate the local community about the need to conserve and protect chimpanzees and their local bio-diversity as a whole.