Goodall visits Freetown chimp shelter
Print Edition
Jane Goodall visited a chimpanzee sanctuary in Sierra Leone yesterday that has taken on the veteran primatologist鈥檚 mission to protect the animals threatened by deforestation, disease and hunting.
Goodall, 84, famous for her groundbreaking study of chimpanzees in East Africa in the 1960s, praised the work of her old friends, Bala Amarasekaran and his wife Sharmila, who set up the sanctuary on the west of the continent on her suggestion two decades ago.
鈥淲hat it truly takes to protect chimpanzees is someone having the passion and the heart to create their own sanctuary, just as Bala did in Sierra Leone,鈥 she said.
Julius Madaa Bio, president of a country that is home to about 10 percent of an estimated 55,000 chimps in the wild, on Wednesday awarded the British woman the Order of the Rokel, Sierra Leone鈥檚 highest honor.
Among the chimps at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, founded in 1995 in a rainforest near the capital Freetown, was Flavour, an 18-month-old orphan chimp.
Sanctuary worker Mama P took in her arms and gently washed her toes, then arms, body and ears.
Most chimps arrive malnourished and abandoned, often traumatized by being split from family. Some come with wounds from shotgun pellets or machetes, victims of the thriving bushmeat and poaching trades.
Deforestation and disease are also major threats. Sierra Leone鈥檚 forest cover decreased by nearly 10 percent from 1990 to 2005, mostly due to the expansion of human settlements, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
鈥淚n this country there are about 5,500 chimps left in the wild,鈥 said the sanctuary鈥檚 manager Aram Kazandjian.
鈥淚f the chimpanzees go extinct, it will cause perpetual issues to the environment and that will trickle down and reach the roots of society.鈥
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