Patrolling Côte d'Ivoire's Last Stronghold for Western Chimpanzees

Taï National Park is a 3,300 km² UNESCO World Heritage rainforest in southwestern Côte d'Ivoire and one of the last strongholds for West Africa's critically endangered chimpanzees, whose numbers across the country have collapsed by up to 90% since the 1990s. Founded in 2000 by primatologist Christophe Boesch, the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation runs annual chimpanzee surveys with Côte d'Ivoire's parks authority (OIPR) and supports eco-guard patrols against poaching and illegal gold panning inside the park. Since 2016, WCF has used camera traps to systematically monitor wildlife across 200 km² of the park, and its surveys estimate Taï's chimpanzee population has remained relatively stable at roughly 300 to 800 individuals. WCF now also runs sister programmes protecting chimpanzees in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.