• Help End Chimpanzee Research!
• The Bili Apes Are In Trouble
• Current News

Learn how positive action for chimpanzees can have an effect on free-living and captive populations and how you can become involved in this cause.

The Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute and Friends of Washoe are committed to making a difference in the lives of chimpanzees. We are a part of a world wide community of other caring organizations that are making a difference in the lives of captive and free-living chimpanzees.

Check this page often for updates of current news and information and ways you can help.

HR 5852 would stop invasive research and provide sanctuary for all apes
- Please write your congressional representative and encourage your friends and family to do so
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We have before us an opportunity to help stop the use of chimpanzees and other great apes in biomedical research. A bi-partisan group in Congress this week introduced the Great Ape Protection Act (HR 5852) which would permanently end invasive research on chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons.

The bill would prohibit invasive research, US funding for such research both at home and abroad, as well as the transportation and breeding of apes for such research. Additionally, the bill would require the permanent retirement of all federally owned apes--about 600 of the 1200 apes in research (primarily chimpanzees).

You can find a sample letter that you can edit and e-mail or mail to your congressperson at http://ga1.org/campaign/gapa

You can find more information about the Great Ape Protection Act at http://www.releasechimps.org/ and http://www.hsus.org/

The Bili Apes Are In Trouble

by Cleve Hicks of the Bili Ape Project

NOTE: Cleve Hicks is a former graduate student at CHCI. This letter was originally written for, and currently appears on, RichardDawkins.net.]

I am pleased to see that RichardDawkins.net has posted on its website the recent article in The Guardian about our Bili Ape Project. This article was written a little over two months ago, when a rosy future seemed to lie ahead for our project. During the 2006-2007 field season, we established Camp Gangu, 40 km from the nearest human settlements and in the middle of a pristine forest inhabited not by humans, but by forest elephants, lions, hyenas (yes, the latter two species are found deep in the forest!), giant forest hogs, and a large population of naïve chimpanzees who reacted to our presence with more curiosity than fear. We spent hours observing and filming these apes. We discovered more elements of the Bili apes’ unique culture snail and fruit smashing, honey-dipping, and even the consumption of a leopard, observed by Ligada, our most experienced Azande field assistant. [Please visit http://www.wasmoethwildlife.org for photos and films of our work.]

The community conservation project run by The Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation (TWWF) was back on track, after a year in which the buying of the locals’ coffee had been suspended due to continued elephant-poaching. The Congolese representative of TWWF, Michel Mokede, was monitoring the situation at Bili, and several elephant poachers had been arrested. Efforts were underway to bring in Ecoguards to help protect this vast area of unspoiled wilderness.

I was scheduled to leave Holland for Bili in mid-September for my third field season, and research collaborations were underway with other universities. Then, in early July, the news came from Michel: within the last month, over a period of a week or two, a large number of gold miners had flooded into the Bili area! Apparently the local chiefs had invited in over 1200 of them to open an artisanal mine, within 50 km of Gangu. In addition, we were told by Michel that a mining permit had been granted for Gangu itself (although no mine has yet been opened). This is all illegal under Congolese law, as the Bili area is part of a hunting reserve -- but in this frontier region, the law is often impossible to enforce. The attitude towards our conservation project seems to have turned hostile, and miners continue to pour in to the area from as far away as 300 km.

Tragically, large-scale mining of minerals such as gold and coltan inevitably leads to massive degradation of the fauna in surrounding areas (see what happened to Eastern lowland gorillas living in the Kahuzi-Biega World Heritage Site, also in The DRC. Their population was decimated within a few years of the opening of coltan mines in the park). The miners themselves consume large amounts of bushmeat, and their activities provide a cover for ivory hunters, who will without a doubt be drawn from the mine towards the large elephant herds in their remote Gangu refuge. Once this untouched forest is invaded by hundreds of hungry poachers, it may be impossible to ever undo the damage.

Given the seriousness of the situation, TWWF and I have spent the last month writing emails to the ICCN (Institute Congolais Pour la Conservation de la Nature), and writing and visiting government officials in Kisangani and Kinshasa. My return to Bili has been postponed. The plan to habituate the Gangu chimpanzees has obviously been abandoned, at least for the time being. In mid-October, I will fly into Aketi, a town about 130 km SW of Bili, to survey for chimpanzees and other large mammals in the nearby forests. Aketi is rather close to the area in which four gorilla skulls were found a century ago, possibly belonging to a relict population called Gorilla gorilla uellensis -- if there really were gorillas here then, they were separated from their eastern and western cousins by hundreds of kms. So, who knows what we might find!

We are poised to return to Bili if and when it is safe to do so. The representatives of TWWF are in Kisangani right now, seeking a solution to the problem. The Congolese government must be encouraged to enforce its conservation laws, which were designed to protect some of the world’s most amazing and charismatic mega-fauna. It would be a terrible shame if the Bili apes were to disappear from the planet just as we were getting to know them!

Cleve Hicks
The Bili Apes Project
Amsterdam
11 September, 2007

[Note: The photos in this article are the property of Cleve Hicks. They are used on FriendsOfWashoe.org with permission. Do not reproduce or redistribute them without the express, written permission of Mr. Hicks.]

Current News

Great Apes are being exploited on TV! Please help!

Learn more about the Chimpanzee Collaboratory.

Great Apes are being hunted to extinction!

Great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos -- are being hunted to extinction for commercial bushmeat in the equatorial forests of west and central Africa. A ragged farflung army of 2,000 bushmeat hunters supported by the timber industry infrastructure will illegally shoot and butcher over 3,000 gorillas and 4,000 chimpanzees this year.

Learn more at the Bushmeat Project Website.