Chimpanzees are humans' closest living relatives—our lineages drifted apart just seven million years ago. Despite our kinship, humans and chimpanzees today face very different realities. While we flourish, chimpanzees suffer. The threats they endure are numerous—hunting for bushmeat, hunting for the trade of infants, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, disease. Now, nations in East and Central Africa are banding together to protect one subspecies of chimpanzee, the eastern chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii.
Eastern chimpanzees are the best-known of the chimpanzee subspecies due to the work of Jane Goodall and her colleagues, who conducted long-term studies of eastern chimpanzees in Tanzania at Gombe Stream National Park.
The eastern chimpazee conservation action plan will guide the protection of eastern chimpanzees during the next ten years. Among its objectives are plans to establish 16 key areas that would protect 96 percent of known eastern chimpanzee populations. The plan also aims to combat two major threats to the subspecies—illegal hunting and trafficking. Other plan objectives include reducing the rate of habitat loss, gathering data on chimpanzee populations, studing the effects of disease and promoting community-based conservation efforts.
Photo © Andrew Plumptre / Wildlife Conservation Society.
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