- Guinea-Bissau is home to around 5% of critically endangered western chimpanzees, who face numerous threats including habitat loss, disease and illegal trade.
- A recent study found numerous chimps held in private residences and hotels, often taken from the wild as infants and held in poor conditions.
- The study’s authors recommend revising laws and penalties regulating hunting or keeping chimpanzees captive, training for officials responsible for enforcement, and a public awareness campaign about the dangers of keeping wild animals.
YAOUNDÉ — It’s not uncommon to see chimpanzees kept as pets in private homes and hotels in Guinea-Bissau. 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.
Maria Joana Ferreira da Silva, a Portuguese researcher from the Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources at the University of Porto in Portugal, 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 Biodiversity and Protected Areas (IBAP).
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 (Pan troglodytes); the majority of the captive animals were patas monkeys (Erythrocebus patas). Ferreira da Silva’s own fieldwork between 2006 and 2022 recorded 18 chimpanzees being held in homes or hotels.
The chimpanzees’ captors told IBAP researchers they had bought the animals as infants from hunters who 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 (P. t. verus) is estimated at anywhere between 17,000 and 96,000 individuals; about 5-6% 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.
A 2019 study estimated Guinea-Bissau is home to between 900 and 6,000 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 IBAP and 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,” she told Mongabay by email. “This is a major concern for the country as it not only threatens chimpanzee conservation but contributes to strengthening criminal networks that operate clandestinely and destructively in local flora and fauna markets.”
Urgent need for strategy to protect chimps
Guinean-Bissau’s authorities consider the western chimpanzee a flagship animal for forest conservation. Since the 1990s, the country has relied on the creation of new protected areas as one of its main strategies to protect the ape’s habitat and prevent trafficking. But this has proved inadequate.
“The lack of effective regulation and control mechanisms, combined with the growing demand for chimpanzees as pets, only exacerbates the situation, making the need for prevention and enforcement measures more urgent than ever,” Regalla de Barros said.
The researchers recommend raising public awareness of the risks associated with keeping wild animals; defining and updating penalties for people found keeping live chimpanzees; and training for officials on national and international laws and regulations related to the wildlife trade.
They also call for setting up a sanctuary or rehabilitation center in Guinea-Bissau, and the creation of a centralized database of information about wild animals kept as pets.
While Guinea-Bissau doesn’t yet have a dedicated sanctuary for the rehabilitation of chimpanzees rescued from captivity, several conservation organizations have made efforts to help mistreated animals. One such organization is the Pan-African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), which rescued six chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau between 2015 and 2022, relocating them to sanctuaries in Liberia and Kenya.
“As is the case for all countries without a sanctuary, the creation of an accredited sanctuary in Guinea-Bissau, capable of ensuring the long-term care of rescued western chimpanzees, is key to ensuring stricter enforcement of laws regarding private chimpanzee ownership,” PASA program officer Kaitlyn Bock told Mongabay by email.
The loss of western chimpanzees will have significant consequences for the health of Guinea-Bissau’s forests, as numerous studies show that these primates contribute to forest regeneration, for example as seed dispersers.
Chimpanzee conservation is therefore a crucial element in preserving Guinea-Bissau’s environmental balance and rich biodiversity.
This story was first published here in French on March 19, 2025.
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Citations:
Ferreira da Silva, M. J., & Regalla, A. (2025). The illegal trade in live western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Guinea‐Bissau and proposed conservation management actions. Conservation Letters, 18(1). doi:10.1111/conl.13087
Heinicke, S., Mundry, R., Boesch, C., Amarasekaran, B., Barrie, A., Brncic, T., … Kühl, H. S. (2019). Advancing conservation planning for western chimpanzees using IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. — The case of a taxon-specific database. Environmental Research Letters, 14(6), 064001. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab1379
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