MARXAN solution output

Informed land-use decision making with the MARXAN Decision Support Tool

Nelson is a senior community development officer responsible for implementing initiatives in sustainable livelihoods programs, conservation and infrastructure projects such as community conservancies and clean energy technologies. But Nelson is witnessing growing pressure in his rural, savanna woodland landscape from seemingly every conceivable interest both afoot and afar. Local pastoralists are stocking ever more head of cattle in an attempt to buffer their livelihoods against the increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. Lions and elephants seem to emulate the vicissitudes of the weather and ‘wander’ onto farming settlements in search of a meal. A newly discovered oil field by a foreign prospecting company has gotten wealthy urban investors buying off land in the middle of nowhere from desperate pastoral communities. While Nelson is fictional, this scenario isn’t farfetched.  Many rural communities occupy areas rich in biodiversity and mineral resources, but are themselves short on capital and institutional planning capacity.

MARXAN solution output

Red areas represent Marxan solutions for meeting habitat needs of suite of conservation targets under current climate.

Based on years of experience in the landscape, Nelson has an understanding of how individual portions of the landscape are used by stakeholders and contribute to maintaining the diversity of species and ecosystems.  The montane forest provides a source of freshwater, habitat for wildlife, non-timber forest products, and nature tourism; the small plots of farmland propping up modest households with extra income and sustenance, while the vast grasslands both fatten cattle and support iconic wildlife. But what to make of the oil discovery and potential windfall of revenues, infrastructure development, and land speculation skyrocketing? Change can bring significant benefits to some but not without consequences both socially and ecologically. Many of the negative consequences can be avoided, however, if the development is well-planned, through a structured and inclusive decision process.

David Williams, AWF

In this age of hyper globalization, rapid industrialization, and climate change it is not an option to make land-use decisions in isolation, particularly on land and its attributes as a finite resource. Yet it is no easy task to lay all the cards on the table and readily pick a path best for all. This is why a systematic and objective based approach is critical to making informed decisions about the future of the landscape. It becomes imperative to invite all the actors to the table and set objectives, values and conditions for solutions. A ship cannot build and haul its cargo by itself, likewise, ensuring thriving human and ecological communities, requires coordinated planning that considers the interlinked facets of the system and explicitly acknowledges the trade-offs involved in decision making.  

Marxan is one tool in a shop of potential options for organizing several aspects of Nelson’s complex challenge, including where development should be encouraged and what areas are critical to conserve.  Marxan helps Nelson elucidate trade-offs required between stakeholders, and navigate those trade-offs to help actors identify acceptable tradeoffs and outcomes. Marxan is a spatial optimization tool, not to be confused with a land change modeling tool, that aides decision makers in spatially allocating resources or prioritizing locations for conservation or development given an explicit set of objectives, eg. conserve 50% of wetlands while minimizing opportunity cost to pastoralists. Marxan works by aggregating spatial information on the values and activities that are important to stakeholders, including species, ecosystems, mineral resources and water. Then using stakeholder specified objectives it identifies alternative landscape configurations that achieve those objectives and can be mapped out and presented to stakeholders to promote thoughtful discussion and facilitate informed and efficient decision making.

On 19–20th June, ABCG partners, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and Widlife Conservation Society (WCS) held a second Marxan learning workshop at AWF headquarters in Nairobi to review findings of a systematic conservation planning analysis using Maxan in the Kilimanjaro-Amboseli landscape of Kenya and Tanzania. David Williams AWF’s Program Director for Conservation Geography kicked off the event by presenting recently collected and synthesized data on wildlife distribution and related threats that served as inputs for the Marxan-generated scenarios. Participants were then briefed on of the guiding principles of systematic conservation planning, including the fundamental importance of setting quantifiable objectives upon which conservation progress can be measured within a transparent and accountable process. Dan Segan, Conservation Planner, Climate Adaptation Team at WCS, facilitated the review of how the Marxan methodology, based on those fundamental principles, was applied in the Kilimanjaro-Amboseli landscape.  The workshop guided participants through how the information was incorporated into the landscape analysis and how the results of the analysis can be used to highlight critical conservation focus areas.

Lucy Waruingi, African Conservation Centre

Lucy Waruingi, African Conservation Centre.

The workshop also:

  • developed landscape storylines constructed around desired outcomes across specific themes (e.g., water resources, wildlife species, land uses)
  • discussed a communication strategy involving development of communication materials and storylines tailored to individual audiences such as policy makers and land use sector leaders.

 Dave Loubser, AWF

Workshop participants included representatives from the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, AWF Landscapes staff, the School for Field Studies, African Conservation Centre and the Geological Society of Kenya. Many participants offered valuable expertise and feedback on the Marxan generated scenarios, including target suitability, gaps in scenarios and data, and much more. Furthermore, participants identified new opportunities for action such as additional wildlife species that could be added to the analysis to strengthen future Marxan scenarios.

Participants also discussed barriers to change, and how to best communicate findings of the work and engage stakeholders to move the project forward with constructive input, and benefit land and resource managers such as Nelson.

Mesopotamian Ivory

What have the forest elephants ever done for us?

Mesopotamian IvoryAfrican forest elephants–taxonomically and functionally unique from their savanna cousins that they separated from 5 million years ago–are being poached at accelerating rates. Many central African countries have opened up their forests to selective logging and mining concessions, thus enabling access for poachers. However, there is poor range-wide information on the repercussions. 

Analysis of the largest survey dataset ever assembled for forest elephants (80 foot-surveys; covering 13,000 km; 91,600 person-days of fieldwork) revealed that population size declined by ca. 62% between 2002-2011, and the taxon lost 30% of its geographical range. The population is now less than 10% of its potential size, occupying less than 25% of its potential range. High human population density, hunting intensity, absence of law enforcement, poor governance, and proximity to expanding infrastructure are the strongest predictors of decline. 

To save the remaining African forest elephants, illegal poaching for ivory and encroachment into core elephant habitat must be stopped. In addition, the international demand for ivory, which fuels illegal trade, must be dramatically reduced.

~ Coutesy of the Oxford Megafauna Conference, 2014; and Plos ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059469

Gentil right eye

Dr. Maisels covered the following topics:

  • Current Elephant poaching crisis
  • Ancient elephant distribution and elimination from much of the Old World
  • Elephant role in the modern ecosystem
  • Elephant/ megafauna past role in ecosystems; and repercussions thereof

Find the presentation slides via this link here.

Watch the entire webinar recording by clicking here.

Dr. Fiona Maisels is the Coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s wildlife monitoring Programmes in The Congo Basin and one of Central Africa’s most experienced conservationists. Her expertise covers survey methodologies, wildlife abundance and distribution, wildlife ecology and protected area management. She has trained hundreds of wildlife biologists and runs one of the most esteemed training courses in Central Africa. Dr Maisels is on the Scientific Commission of GRASP, is a member of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Stirling. Fiona Maisels 

Dr Maisels studied the feeding ecology of mouflon in Cyprus for her PhD (Edinburgh University)  and has since worked in Central Africa for over 20 years. 

Elephant, Open Parks Network

The Open Parks Network: An Open Knowledge and Learning Platform for Conservation

Elephant, Open Parks Network

The Open Parks Network (OPN) is a visionary suite of tools that uses cyberinfrastructure to unite the highly diverse community of parks and protected areas managers with highly distributed parks-related information created and collected by agencies, research labs, universities, libraries, and interested organizations.

Representatives from Clemson University’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management (PRTM), CU Libraries, and Clemson Computing & Information Technology (CCIT) have worked to create a prototype in partnership with the Southeast Region of the National Parks Service and the World Bank’s Global Tiger Initiative.

The Open Parks Network has been designed to provide busy park professionals “one-stop shopping” for park related research and data management platforms in order to better disseminate the vast amount of knowledge existing in the broad field of park and protected area management. 

Brett Wright, Open Parks Network

Brett Wright is Professor and Chairman, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University.  Dr. Wright has published extensively on the human dimensions of natural resources management in national and international journals and has conducted social science research for the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, state fish and wildlife agencies, and local park and recreation organizations.  He is former President of the National Society for Park Resources, a Fellow in the American Academy of Park and Recreation Administrators and a William Penn Mott Award recipient.  He has been one of the leaders of the Open Parks Network project, a cyberinfrastructure initiative to bring high-end computing to bear on park and natural resource management issues.

Click here to download the presentation.

elephant_league

WildLeaks, the First Secure & Anonymous Platform for Wildlife Crime Whistleblowers

elephant_league

Although it’s now clear that wildlife and forest trafficking has far reaching national and international security and economic implications, many governments tend to see the problem as just an environmental issue and the global fight against wildlife and forest crime is not giving the expected results.

New and innovative approaches are urgently needed and the global civil society can now play its part with WildLeaks.

WildLeaks is a nonprofit collaborative project created & funded by the Elephant Action League (EAL) and managed in collaboration with a group of very experienced individuals, which includes the directors of environmental investigation NGOs, environmental lawyers, accredited journalists, security professionals and ex-law enforcement officers.

Rhino South Africa courtesy Elephant Action League

The Mission of WildLeaks is to receive and evaluate anonymous information regarding wildlife and forest crimes and transform them into actionable items. The submission system is entirely based on the use of the Tor technology, which is integrated in the platform and allows the sources to stay anonymous and to submit sensitive information in a very secure way, always encrypted, in respect to data transmission and management.

The priorities of WildLeaks are to prevent wildlife crime and to facilitate the 

identification, arrest and prosecution of criminals, traffickers, businessmen and corrupt governmental officials behind the poaching of endangered species and the trafficking of wildlife and forest products.

Wildlife crimes very often go undetected and unchallenged when people do not speak up about them, and whistleblowers can play a crucial role in fighting back, creating awareness and doing justice. 

The first 3-month pilot phase of WildLeaks, launched in February 2014, offers us the opportunity to evaluate this tool, have a look at its first results, get precious feedbacks and suggestions, and show how it could support the efforts of the international community in fighting wildlife crime.

Andrea Crosta is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the California based Elephant Action League (EAL) and the Founder and Project Leader of WildLeaks.

Since 1989 he has been involved in a variety of conservation and research projects in Africa, Asia, South America and Europe supported by a private Italian foundation.

WILDLeaks

For over 15 years he has been working also as an international consultant to companies and governmental agencies on high-end security services, homeland security, investigations and risk management, a unique knowledge that he now applies to conservation and wildlife protection. 
As an entrepreneur, in 1998 he founded ‘Think Italy’, one of the very first e-commerce companies in Italy.

In 2010-2012 he was a part of the 2-man team that uncovered the link between the ivory trade and the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab.

Find the full presentation slides and Storify thread via this link here.

William Fowlds

An Account of the Life-Changing Realities of Rhino Poaching

Dr. Will Fowlds gave a talk highlighting his personal accounts with organized wildlife crime and response to the poaching crisis

 

South Africa’s rhino crisis forms a major component of the global, illegal, trade in wildlife. The poaching and the organised crime networks directing them, threaten to have a significant negative effect on conservation, crime and controlled governance in the region. 
My conservation involvement until three years ago was focused on developing multi-stakeholder protected areas and fulfilling my passion as a wildlife vet through clinical work and education. This all changed when I became intimately affected by the implications of poaching through the rhino I have been called to, and who had survived being mutilated. At the time, very little was understood about the poaching methods or the systems driving these brutal criminal acts. I recorded the first ever live footage of a poaching survivor in Feb 2011 and my personal accounts of these incidences have taken me into spaces within media, politics, environmental governance and corporate social responsibility, where I would not have chosen to go
.

 

About Dr. Fowlds

Dr. Will Fowld is a wildlife veterinarian in South Africa. His conservation experience is rooted in the conversion of a fifth generation family owned domestic farm, along with neighboring properties into what is now known as the Amakhala Game Reserve. One of the privileges in Will’s professional life is to work with Rhino around the Eastern Cape reserves and to get to know them as individuals.  

 William Fowlds

Will travels to the East and to the West sharing his personal testimony of the brutal reality of poaching from the coal face as well as efforts to bring back rhino from the brink of death with his pioneering veterinary care. He has partnered with Investec in the form of Investec Rhino Lifeline to enable him to increase his work in the areas of rescue, education and prevention, and to impact on the environmental crisis in these watershed times. He is supported by the Wilderness Foundation and collaborates on rhino related projects through them.  

 

He spends part of his time facilitating courses which connect students from around the world with the diversity of African wildlife. He studied veterinary science through Onderstepoort in Pretoria.

Find the event slideshow here.

On the Wings of Robots: The Ups and Downs of Using UAVs for Conservation

On Wednesday April 2nd 2014, ABCG convened a meeting, hosted at the World Wildlife Fund, U.S., on the rapidly expanding technology of unmanned aerial monitoring, data gathering, and other aspects in biodiversity conservation. With a diverse panel of seven experienced specialists facilitated by John Waugh of Integra LLC, the meeting was open to the public and covered topics including integrating technologies to combat wildlife crime, detecting sparse populations of key species, to X-prize style UAV systems development competitions, and beefing law enforcement from the air with Synthetic-aperture radar equipped UAVs.

A complete webinar recording can be watched by clicking here.

Meeting Objectives

Specifically, the meeting covered the following points:

  • To review the scope of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) currently in use in conservation
  • Understand the conservation opportunities that UAVs provide and the technical specifications needed
  • Identify opportunities for collaboration between conservationists, engineers, and UAV specialists
  • Explore the concerns about increased use of UAVs in conservation, security and human rights

 

Speakers

Natalie Bailey, ABCG Coordinator, kicked off the event with a brief overview of the ABCG collaboration and introduced John Waugh, who moderated the meeting.

WWF Wildlife Crime Technology Project: integrating technologies to combat poaching

With:

Colby Loucks, WWF-US

Summary:

Given the overwhelming threat to elephants, rhinos and tigers, WWF began its Wildlife Crime Technology Project with funding from a Google Global Impact Award. Our approach was to create an umbrella of technology to protect wildlife. This project presents an opportunity to integrate new technologies – such as UAVs – in our work to adapt and implement specialized aerial and ground-based surveillance systems and ranger patrolling to increase the detection and deterrence of poaching in pilot sites in Asia and Africa. WWF’s Wildlife Crime Technology Project will be implemented over a three year period in African and Asian sites. Namibia was selected as the first site for testing during the first phase of the project. In close collaboration with the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism, we focused on proving the concept of technology systems integration, installation, and operational training.

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Virtual Vultures: promising partners in conservation on land and at sea

With:

David Wilkie, Wildlife Conservation Society

Summary:

The Wildlife Conservation Society believes that UAVs may offer novel ways to extend the effectiveness of our current conservation efforts at little additional cost. This presentation offers a brief summary of WCS “pilot-less” tests of UAVs by our field staff and collaborators and offers suggestions for future directions in the use of UAVs to effect conservation.

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Monitoring Chimpanzees and Community Conservation Success in Western Tanzania: The Potential Role of UAVs

With:

Lilian Pintea, Jane Goodall Institute

Summary:

The Greater Gombe and Mahale Ecosystem is more than 20,000 km2 area in western Tanzania. It has been estimated that over 90% of Tanzania’s chimpanzee population is found within this ecosystem. The major threats to chimpanzees are: conversion of habitats into food crops and agricultural land, deliberate killing by humans including snares, disease due to pathogens introduced by humans, incompatible charcoal production, incompatible development and expansion of settlements, incompatible extraction of firewood and logging for timber and human-ignited fires. In order to address these threats, the Jane Goodall Institute and partners have been engaged in facilitating the establishment of community-based organizations, developing bylaws and building local capacity to develop and implement village land-use plans and manage newly established Village Forest Reserves. Areas in western Tanzania are also one of the driest, most open habitats in which chimpanzees occur and the chimpanzees of this region live at extremely low densities and exhibit extremely large home ranges. This presentation will discuss: a) lessons learned from applying UAVs to improve detection of chimpanzee nests in order to improve survey estimates; and b) the potential of using UAVs with the local communities to monitor implementation of their village land use plans and protect and restore Village Forest Reserves.

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Wildlife Conservation UAV challenge

With:

Aliyah Pandolfi, Kashmir World Foundation

Summary:

Aliyah Pandolfi founded the first annual worldwide Wildlife Conservation UAV Challenge to inspire people around the world to collaborate and innovate UAV technology solutions for counter—poaching. It is the fastest—growing, largest and most diverse challenge in the shortest period of time. Teams from all over the world are competing in the challenge to build the most innovative and cost—effective unmanned aerial vehicles which will combat the growing crime of animal poaching.

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Out of Darkness—Into the Light

With:

Joseph Campagna, Artemis Inc.

Summary:

Discussion on Synthetic Aperture Radar as a game changing technology in locating and tracking anyone who thinks they can hide in the cover of night, clouds and forests. Using the world’s only compact-portable, all weather multiband SAR, we are now able to provide law enforcement, governments and organizations accurate detailed information to stop the poaching of elephants, track down the illegal fishing ships and warn our peacekeepers of areas of imminent danger.

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UAV-Oriented Detection of Under the Canopy Poaching Crimes Based on Single Photon Counting Image Arrays and Standoff Laser Spectroscopy

With:

Isaac Shpantzer, Ph.D. Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Optix Medical

Summary:

By using lasers and photon counting imagining arrays developed at Lincoln Labs and Raytheon on can take an image under the canopy to detect poachers, elephants and various endangered species. By using standoff laser-based, digital, pulsed photo-thermal interferometric spectroscopy one can detect from afar the characteristic signature of poachers’ crimes scenes. These UAV-based combined technologies can enable conservation professionals and wildlife authorities in Africa and Asia fight poaching crime effectively.

Eco-Drones: Potential Applications and Best Practices from a Geospatial Framework Approach

With:

Nadine Trahan, Gaia Spatial, LLC

Summary:

Rapidly declining biodiversity and the quality and quantity of habitat and natural resources necessitates urgency for innovative ideas, cutting edge technology and creative approaches to advance scientific understanding of how natural systems function and strengthen conservation, restoration and sustainable development strategies. Eco-drones offer significant potential toward this end. Eco-drone is defined here as an unmanned aerial system (UAS) comprising hardware and software components and operating procedures designed to capture, store, transfer, and process geospatial data that is readily available for visual and/or digital analysis to support socio-environmental applications.

“Potential” is the operative word here, as only a few applications across the range of possibilities have been well tested and documented. In order to realize and advance eco-drone potential, the proven technological components must be matched, integrated, and field tested in conjunction with project specific objectives and site specific logistics. If individual projects are to be successful in their own right and contribute to the wider body of knowledge and solutions, eco-drone planners and operators must have a coherent understanding of the role this technology plays in environmental research and management at large. This presentation aims to contribute toward the development of best practices for achieving these goals.

 

Resources:

Conserving a Species, while Caring about Individuals

Jane Goodall’s philosophy of ‘Every Individual Matters’ has been a core foundation for our Africa Programs at the Jane Goodall Institute.  In each country we work in, we consider the plight of individual chimpanzees, along with that of communities and populations.  A case example is Congo Republic, where we have worked for over two decades.  The original efforts centered around the welfare of individuals that had been confiscated or surrendered over to authorities.  In the past 20 years, more than 200 individuals have been brought to the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center.  In the last 5 years, as the country has politically stabilized, we have been able to expand our focus on public awareness, education and habitat protection with positive results.   Conservation of any species, will only be achieved when local stakeholders value and respect the targeted species.  Our commitment to individuals, provides an important platform for engaging local stakeholders to consider their actions and interactions with other species.  The results of our public awareness campaign is indicating that a change is taking place and our efforts have not been in vain.  Results show a drop from 26% of confiscations originating from the southern Province of Kouilou over a 20 year period, to 0% in the last five years, since the implementation of our education and public awareness programs and street surveys. These results indicate an appreciation and understanding of why apes need to be protected by the general public.  

About the speaker

Debby Cox currently serves as the Jane Goodall Institute’s (JGI) te  chnical advisor supporting various program areas, particularly in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  Since 2009, Cox has helped JGI’s country directors within sub-Saharan Africa develop programs  to alleviate the threats to chimpanzee survival.

Debby started her career in chimpanzee captive management at Taronga Zoo, Australia in 1986. In 1994, Debby volunteered in Burundi at the Jane Goodall Institute’s halfway house for confiscated chimpanzees. She returned as the Co-director in 1994-1995. After translocating the chimps to Kenya she then went onto Uganda to establish a sanctuary for this country at the request of the Institute and the Government of Uganda. Cox assumed the role of executive director of JGI-Uganda.  Cox worked diligently with a wide array of Ugandan government officials and private donors to create what has become the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary.

 

Cox, who received her masters in science from Australia National University in 2004, is a founding member of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) and was a driving force behind its creation.  She continues to be a member of the alliance’s Advisory Council. From 2004, Debby has been a committee member of the IUCN Great Ape Specialist group under the Primate Specialist Group.  In 2008, Debby was elected to the position of Vice President for Captive Care of the International Primatogolical Society.  She also received the Order of Australia award in the general division in 2009.

Cox is an integral part of the management of JGI’s Tchimpounga Rehabilitation Center in the Republic of Congo. Her work at the sanctuary includes supporting the site’s expansion to three nearby islands and continues to support JGIs Africa Program meets its goal.
Photo courtesy of Francis Tarla Garoua Wildlife College (EFG) in Cameroon

Recent Activities and Challenges facing Garoua Wildlife College in Cameroon–Training Wildlife Professionals in Central and West Africa: Garoua Wildlife College in Cameroon

Garoua Wildlife College (EFG) was created in Cameroon in 1970 to provide in-service wildlife training for francophone government agencies in sub-Saharan Africa.  Since its inception, EFG has trained over 1300 students from 24 different countries. EFG is the only regional wildlife college serving French-speaking Africa, playing a unique role in developing key competencies in wildlife management throughout the sub-region. 

Photo courtesy of Francis Tarla Garoua Wildlife College (EFG) in Cameroon
Photo courtesy of Francis Tarla Garoua Wildlife College (EFG) in Cameroon

 

Former EFG Director Francis Tarla will share both the challenges and opportunities that EFG faces in achieving its mission. Financial and human resources are both challenging, but the need for services that EFG provides remains great. The region is under great threat from complex transborder poaching and wildlife crime. Support from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Last Great Ape organization(LAGA) are helping to further develop the capacity of EFG in addressing wildlife crime. 

Press release: USFWS & Garoua Conservation Capacity Building Program 

Saving Great Apes: Measuring Success in Changing Attitudes & Behaviors

Filmmaker and INCEF Founder Cynthia Moses discussed how the project reached audiences with 80 to 90 percent illiteracy to change behaviors, measure retained increase of knowledge and changes in attitudes over time and gathering indications of behavioral change.

Cynthia Moses is an award winning Wildlife Filmmaker.  Her work in Africa and around the world motivated her to become more involved in creating communication tools for low resource populations. As founder of the International Conservation and Education Fund (INCEF) for the past 10 years, she has overseen a mission to integrate conservation and health and development issues through grassroots video centered outreach education. Her goal was to place a premium on the importance of communications that would be appropriate for the most remote and marginalized audiences in on behalf of broad ecosystem preservation including improved health, education, gender equality, economic growth and more. INCEF’s specific methodology has developed and institutionalized a media production and dissemination capability within the partnering NGOs’ education and advocacy programs.

Its completed projects have yielded more than 80 films, all of which comply with the organizations principles of local control and execution.  These have been viewed by 10’s of thousands of low resource village dwellers through community level screenings including intense and unprecedented group discussions of problems based on shared experience under the supervision of trained outreach educator.
Estelle Raballand, CCC

The Role of the NGO Chimpanzee Conservation Center in the Protection of the Haut Niger National Park GUINEA

The Centre de Conservation pour Chimpanzés, or Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC), is the only chimpanzee sanctuary in Guinea, West Africa. This center is located in the Parc National du Haut Niger (PNHN), one of the two national parks in the country and a priority site for the conservation of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Estelle Raballand, CCCThe CCC is a Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) – affiliated sanctuary, which currently cares for and rehabilitates, in groups, 43 rescued chimpanzees, primarily victims of the pet trade which are confiscated by the national authorities. In adherence with the IUCN Guidelines for Great Ape Reintroductions, the CCC successfully released in 2008 their first group of chimpanzees in a selected site within the core area of the Mafou forest in the PNHN, which also harbors a population of wild conspecifics. This release project is only the second of its kind in Africa. Additional chimpanzees were released in 2010 to reinforce the first release group. Since 2007, with the release in mind, the CCC has successfully boosted the national and local governmental authorities’ commitment to restore protection and law enforcement measures and initiatives and to curtail illegal activities ongoing within the park. The CCC works alongside its partners to improve respect for and recognition of the rights and value of great apes in Guinea, a stronghold for wild chimpanzees in West Africa. The CCC has successfully protected the north and western part of the PNHN – Mafou, which is home to approximately 500 wild chimpanzees. They are currently hoping to expand technical and logistical support to the newly trained and dispatched eco-guards to ensure effective implementation of the PNHN protection plan, enhance communication between all stakeholders involved in the PNHN, and insure that CCC becomes more sustainable as an organization. CCC has received funding from the USFWS Great Ape Conservation Fund for activities in 2008-2009 and again in 2011.
 
About Estelle  
Estelle Raballand has been the director of the Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC) since 1999 at the Government of Guinea demand. CCC/Greyo-PilletShe has worked with chimpanzees since 1994 in four different countries. She’s also a vet technician specialized in emergency medicine. She’s been fundraising, managing and been the driving force and an active player in the release, protection and education programs of the CCC. She’s also the president of Project Primate, Inc. a US NGO, funding the CCC.

Find the accompanying slide show presentation here.