SAFE
Saving Animals From Extinction
The biggest threats to wild chimpanzees are habitat loss, poaching, and infectious disease.
Wild chimpanzees are endangered - they have already disappeared from 4 African countries and are rapidly nearing extinction in many others. The western subspecies are critically endangered. Without concerted action, poaching, habitat loss, and infectious disease will wipe out these beautiful and fascinating animals, humans’ closest genetic relatives.
Chimp SAFE works with on-site conservation efforts and AZA-accredited zoos to preserve wild chimpanzees.
We need your help to protect them.
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Poaching
While poaching of apes is illegal across Africa, it remains a thriving business. Chimpanzees are hunted for “bushmeat”, kidnapped to be sold as pets (a process which kills as many as 10 adult chimpanzees for every infant sold), and used in medicinal rituals or “secret societies”. In addition, traps set by poachers for other animals often severely injure or even kill chimpanzees.
Habitat loss
Industries like logging, mining, and agriculture are destroying Africa’s forests - 80% of forest cover in West and Central Africa is already lost. As chimpanzees’ natural habitats disappear, they are driven into small pockets of forest they find difficult to navigate. The loss of forests also forces chimpanzees to live in close proximity to humans, leading to conflict and the killing of chimpanzees to protect human crops.
Infectious Disease
The spread of human settlements into chimpanzees’ habitats puts chimpanzees into contact with human diseases like Ebola, anthrax, yaws, and respiratory diseases. These diseases can be devastating for chimpanzee populations - due to chimpanzees’ slow reproduction rate, it could take up to 130 years for a population to recover from a single high-mortality disease outbreak.
About Chimp Safe Program
Chimpanzee SAFE (Saving Animals From Extinction) works with conservation sites in Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Republic of Congo, and AZA-accredited zoos to protect wild chimpanzees and increase public awareness and education about them.
