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CCC's Kenda with chimps Kindi (right) and Veve (front).
(©2005/ Estelle Raballand) |
It is a long way from the conference rooms of North American law schools—where the argument for considering chimpanzees and other great apes as legal persons is being seriously debated—to the forests along the shared border of Guinea and Sierra Leone, one of the many places in their range where wild chimpanzees are endangered.
Yet it is this distance that Humane Society International and its partners in the Chimpanzee Conservation and Sensitization Program are trying to bridge—the distance between abstract moral and legal deliberations in the developed world and the urgent need for on-the-ground protection for chimpanzees in West Africa.
The goal of the project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and conducted by the Jane Goodall institute, Pro Natura, HSI, and several in-country partners, is to raise public awareness and strengthen institutional capacity to ensure the protection of chimpanzees. The project accomplishes this through education, law enforcement training, and community-centered conservation and development activities.
"This USAID grant was not simply unique for its preservationist ethos," said HSUS Senior Policy Adviser Bernard Unti, who traveled to Guinea and Sierra Leone in late 2005 to conduct a review of legislation and law enforcement activities related to chimpanzee protection. "It's rarer still to see an international aid project so singularly focused on animals."
Such considerations cinched HSI's decision to participate, according to Unti. "We wanted to affirm the principle that this is an exemplary use of American foreign aid, and to help ensure that these funds do some good for endangered animals, for people who live in proximity to them, and for the habitat and natural resources that are crucial to the survival of all."
The CCSP's Goals: To Educate, Not to Punish
The Chimpanzee Conservation and Sensitization Program aims to build the capacity of local and national institutions in both Guinea and Sierra Leone to respond to the multiple threats that endanger chimpanzees, especially development, the poaching of animals for bushmeat, and the commerce in infant chimpanzees for the pet trade. The target audiences include not just the general public but legislators, law enforcement agencies, educators and community leaders.
The Jane Goodall Institute is the lead organization, handling the broader elements of the public awareness effort, while HSI and Pro Natura are handling law enforcement training and sustainable development projects, respectively. In Guinea, in-country partners include Guinée Ecologie and the Chimpanzee Conservation Center, a sanctuary run by longtime HSI collaborator Estelle Raballand in the Parc National du Haut Niger in the Faranah Prefecture. In Sierra Leone, similar responsibilities are being handled by the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary and the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone.
Education and public awareness play a crucial role in the project's law enforcement component. HSI will develop a training program for wildlife law enforcement in both countries. The initiative targets law enforcement agencies and offices at border crossings, police stations, and wildlife ranger outposts as sites for posters and literature.
The long term goal is to enhance capacity for the enforcement of wildlife protection measures in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The political will to protect chimpanzees exists in both countries, but other factors, notably the region's deep poverty, make conservation work difficult, Unti said.
"Both Guinea and Sierra Leone are signatories to CITES," Unti said, noting that chimpanzees are included on the list of species threatened with extinction in appendix 1 of CITES. "Unfortunately, there is virtually no enforcement capacity within the relevant government agencies."
Saving Chimpanzees Where It Counts
In the developed world, the animal protection community has often emphasized the genetic heritage and developed emotional and social capacities of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos as part of an argument that these animals deserve heightened moral and legal consideration.
In less developed nations, the challenge of ensuring basic protection for chimpanzees is more elemental, because they face daily threats from the human population with whom they share their environment.
"Programs like the CCSP are essential to a meaningful strategy for chimpanzee protection in the world," Unti said. "We have held enough conferences and commissioned enough studies; what we badly need is action to prevent their destruction in the places where they still thrive."
