Chimpanzee Trade Has Been Fought Back By Guinea Bissau
Chimpanzee Trade Has Been Fought Back By Guinea Bissau because publish assessment of illegal trade of chimpanzees in the journal conservation.
Chimpanzees can be seen chained to trees or metal poles, or living alone in small metal cages, often without a permanent water source and lacking room to walk or jump around.
, published an assessment of the illegal trade of chimpanzees in in the journal Conservation Letters in February.
She writes that no systematic survey of the trade has been carried out across Guinea-Bissau, but cites a 2020 survey conducted by Guinea-Bissau’s Institute for .
Conducted in the central region of Bafatá and the southern regions of Tombali and Quinara, it found 98 people there kept wild-born primates in captivity.
Among these were five chimpanzees the majority of the captive animals were patas monkeys .
The chimpanzees’ had either killed their mothers for the meat, or targeted the troops specifically to get infants for sale.
Despite it being illegal to hunt or keep chimpanzees, they freely admitted to keeping the apes captive and invited strangers to take photographs with them.
According to Ferreira da Silva, most captive chimpanzees die of illness or are killed as they reach puberty, when they frequently become aggressive.
The global population of the western chimpanzee subspecies is estimated at anywhere between 17,000 and 96,000 individuals; of this number is found in Guinea-Bissau.
The subspecies is categorized as critically endangers on the IUCN Red List, with its population crashing by 80% between 1994 and 2014.
Guinea-Bissau is home to between 905 and 6,012 chimpanzees in Cantanhez National Park and Cufada Lagoons Natural Park, two protected areas in the country’s south.
Threats to chimps include habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting, and disease, particularly leprosy, which has been detected in Cantanhez National Park.
Aissa Regalla de Barros, director-general of a co-author of the Conservation Letters study, told Mongabay that Guinea-Bissau’s chimpanzees face a major threat from illegal trade.
“Although we can’t put an exact price on this practice, it is safe to say that chimpanzee trafficking follows the same paths as other types of illegal trafficking
This is a major concern for the country as it not only threatens chimpanzee conservation but contributes to strengthening criminal networks that operate clandestinely
Compiled by
World Travel News, Gorilla Trekking Uganda and Gorilla Trekking Rwanda
