As a guardian of the 14. July to Weltschimpansentag stated that they wanted to celebrate “the closest Relatives of humans in the animal Kingdom, and honor” and also to the work of the famous behavioural scientist Jane Goodall to remember. On that day 60 years ago, she entered for the first Time in the Gombe national Park in the extreme West of Tanzania and began their research work. Tirelessly, the now 86-year-old British woman has since been on the road, the people, the chimpanzees closer to them, and to promote protection.
Thilo Thielke
Free Rapporteur for Africa, based in Cape town.
F. A. Z. Twitter
shrinks The number of animals, meanwhile, increasingly. As Jane Goodall in the mountain forest began on lake Tanganyika with your studies, populated and probably more than half a million chimpanzees in the forests of Africa. “Today there are no more than 150,000,” says the German chimpanzee expert Sebastian Louis, to take care of in the North, Zambia to the Monkey sanctuary Chimfunshi. In this Sanctuary, close to the Congolese border, around nursed 130 great apes that were previously exempt from the captivity.
“more and more often in the last time parks chimpanzees for Chinese entertainment captured,” says Louis. According to the Washington species protection agreement Cites strictly regulated trade across borders, was control because of the corruption in many African States hardly. Actually, the endangered primates are allowed to be traded only in very rare exceptional cases for scientific purposes. Nevertheless, the British species protection organisation, the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation estimates that in just the past six years, a minimum of 14,000 of up to 1.70 meters and 70 kilos, the animals disappeared by the illegal wildlife trade.
“The forest is in danger. From all sides.“
But also the rapid population growth in Africa for the animals and their habitat shrinking. While chimpanzees are poached warriors in the inaccessible forests of Central Africa with hungry, Bush, is the space at the borders of the national Park, always close. Conflicts between farmers defending their fields, and the stress due to the more and more aggressive animals to take.
the Dramatic Situation in Uganda in East Africa. “Still, there are 5000 to 6000 chimpanzees in the country,” says Joshua Rukundo. “But in just the past five years we have lost between 1000 and 1500 chimpanzees.” Rukundo manages the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary. On the island in lake Victoria, currently in charge of about 50 chimpanzees, which were similar to those from the Zambian Orphanage is saved from the Hand of Tierquälern. Each year, 20,000 to 40,000 acres of tropical rain forest have been lost in Uganda, complains Rukundo. “These forests are the classic habitat of our chimpanzees.”