Lessons learned while protecting wild chimpanzees in West Africa

Though human activities are postulated to be the main drivers of the worldwide biodiversity crisis, humans are also suggested by some to be an important part of the solution to the crisis. How can such a paradox be best solved? This paradox requires an adaptive, context‐specific, dynamic solution, at a fine‐grained scale that varies by location. The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) works on the ground in three West African countries: In Côte d'Ivoire, where bushmeat consumption is a recurrent and generalized threat to wildlife, WCF used live theater performances in the villages to address this issue. Post‐activity evaluations revealed that the more often individuals have been part of such awareness activities, the less they will consume bushmeat. In nearby Liberia, where illegal miners have invaded many protected areas and intact forests, the WCF supports Community Watch Teams (CWT) to patrol the Sapo National Park with Forestry Development Authority staff. Within 11 months of its creation, the CWT patrols around and in the Sapo National Park resulted in thousands of illegal miners progressively leaving the national park. In Guinea, where coexistence between humans and primates has prevailed based on religious traditions, the WCF developed a strategic approach, as the Moyen‐Bafing National Park contains about 5000 chimpanzees as well as some 255 villages. Therefore, we adopted an “integrated landscape approach” whereby the community activities are planned in combination with initiatives increasing forest regeneration and connectivity in high conservation value areas. Communities in northern Guinea confronted with dramatic fluctuations due to climatic changes welcomed such activities that help them become more resilient and adaptable to those alterations. In conclusion, evidence‐based information at the local level helps to resolve the conservation paradox by adapting with the local communities' context‐specific dynamic approaches to enhance the conservation of great apes.


| INTRODUCTION
The current biodiversity crisis is considered to be mainly the result of different human activities that are detrimental to the environment and its fauna. Many studies have documented how some human activities negatively impacted the distribution of species (review in Kablan et al., 2019;Redford & Sanderson, 2000;Robinson & Bennett, 2000), the population size of those species (Heinicke et al., 2019;Wilkie et al., 2011) and the presence of behavioral diversity . On the other side, some are claiming that for conservation to be effective it needs to include the local human populations (Schwartzman et al., 2000(Schwartzman et al., , 2010. This paradox of including in conservation projects the same people that led to the negative impacts presents a very special challenge and has led to conflicting results (C. Howe et al., 2014;McShane et al., 2011;Suich et al., 2015).
Great apes are very sensitive to human presence (G. Campbell et al., 2008(G. Campbell et al., , 2011Köndgen et al., 2008;Heinicke et al., 2019;Tranquilli et al., 2011); thus, the proposition that conservation works best when we involve humans seem at first more difficult to implement with great apes than it is with other species that are less sensitive to human presence. A recent analysis showed that chimpanzee densities drop dramatically when the forest has been degraded by as little as 8% (Heinicke et al., 2019). However, the success of conservation is not only dependent on the species we want to protect, but also on the socioeconomic context and the density of humans in the area where the populations live.
The worldwide human population expansion has made it impossible for conservation projects to work in areas pristine, and often valuable biodiversity remains despite the presence of human populations. In addition, the consequences of climate change are felt more heavily in areas of the planet where biodiversity is highest, the tropics. Both factors have radically altered the context of conservation projects in recent years. We must not only think about species valued for conservation but need to integrate the larger concept that involves both, social and the even larger climatic changes. This begs for dynamic solutions as those contexts vary extensively with the specific situations, the susceptibility to climate change of the area, and the rainfall alterations.
The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) was created in 2000 in the face of the rapid progress of deforestation in West Africa, especially visible to us in the South-West of Côte d'Ivoire during the last 40 years of the Taï chimpanzee project. The WCF started its activities in Côte d'Ivoire by supporting the local authorities to protect the Taï National Park and the nearby chimpanzee populations. However, the chimpanzees faced a rapid decline in the whole region (Kormos & Boesch, 2003), and so the WCF expanded its activities in Liberia, in 2006, where much more forest blocks were remaining than in Côte d'Ivoire, and in 2009 in Guinea, due to the presence of the largest West African chimpanzee populations subject to important pressure from a booming mining sector. In 2016, the West African chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) was declared by the IUCN as critically endangered, due to a decrease of over 80% in the last 20 years , and this reinforced the motivation of the WCF to work towards protecting remaining chimpanzee populations within national parks.
The WCF, in its effort to improve the survival of chimpanzee populations in West Africa, has been addressing this conservation paradox in different ways. Conservation efforts in West Africa have to be done on the ground where the context varies extensively in terms of the environment, from the rainforest to open woodlands and to dry savanna, or in terms of human population size, density, levels of education, and religious practices that affects their hunting habits , Junker et al., 2015, as well as in terms of economic development (Junker et al., 2015). Because of this, the WCF decided to adopt context-specific activities to address some of the most important threats to the chimpanzee populations and their forested environment. This means that depending on the specific context we face, the solutions adopted included different levels of involvement of the local communities and different types of activities.
This will be illustrated in turn for the three West African countries in which the WCF is active; Côte d'Ivoire, when addressing the threat of bushmeat consumption, Liberia, when addressing the threats of illegal mining, and Guinea, when addressing the pressure of desertification to maintain the traditional coexistence of chimpanzees and humans.

| ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AND BUSHMEAT CONSUMPTION IN CÔTE D'IVOIRE
In Côte d'Ivoire, forest degradation and hunting pressure were the two main threats faced by wildlife in this economically successful West African country, which is the largest worldwide cocoa producer and the third for coffee. In early 2000, the pristine rainforest was to be found only in Taï National Park (NP) and some neighboring classified forests. The chimpanzee population within the park was estimated to be around 3000 individuals in the early 1980s, it declined to about 300 individuals in late 2010 (N'Goran et al., 2012). As a response to the hunting pressure, the WCF developed an interactive theater play to address the issue of coexistence with chimpanzees with all local communities around the park, as well as a school education program, the Club Pan. At the same time, WCF actively supported the local authorities in implementing a yearly biomonitoring program of Taï NP, supporting the development of two ecotourism projects and implementing activities with the local communities (see www.wildchimps.org).
The Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, is one of the largest protected areas of the Upper Guinean rainforest in West Africa, and as such is famous for its high diversity and large populations of 11 different primate species, including chimpanzees. However, the local populations have a long tradition of consuming bushmeat, as well as selling meat to big cities ( Figure 1) (Borchers et al., 2014;Caspary et al., 2001;Refisch & Kone, 2005), resulting in an estimated total amount of 974,171 kg of bushmeat consumed per year of which 247,683 kg is primate meat ( Table 1 in Refisch & Kone, 2005). Taking into account the proportion of primate meat, that is, chimpanzee (on average 1.24% see Figure 1), it provides an estimate of about 120 chimpanzees eaten per year (taking an average of 25 kg per chimpanzee of all ages killed). We also know that not each chimpanzee shot by a hunter is found, as wounded individuals run away silently, that is, this number is a strong underestimation (possibly up to three to four times more individual chimpanzees are actually shot).
When taking into account the existing wild animal population sizes, many of these species are hunted unsustainably, leading to strongly reduced population sizes and to local extinctions (Table 1).
To tackle the specific issue of bushmeat hunting, the WCF de- wildchimps.org). The theater play "The chimpanzees are our cousins" was started in 2005 by a local professional company "Ymako Teatri," and was later complemented by amateur school teams being trained to play in their local languages. The WCF implemented this program for many years around Taï NP and we added new theater plots over the years to address urgent local issues.
In addition to the theater play, the Club Pan was launched in 2007/2008 with 10 specific lessons in nine schools around the Taï NP, including 1244 participants with 616 pupils from the first year and 667 from the second year of primary school (Borchers et al., 2014). The Club Pan is an extra-scholarly course about the environment and biodiversity taught by teachers having undergone training by the WCF. It was implemented in schools of villages where previously the theater performances had taken place , Borchers et al., 2014.
We maintained the Club Pan for several years, and, in 2011, it was active in 12 schools with 754 pupils following the 10 lessons, and a parent day with the participation of about 2800 adults whose knowledge, transmitted by their children, was evaluated.
To evaluate the impact of our environmental education program, we performed a bushmeat study in the villages around Taï NP that have been visited by our program for a varying number of times. We selected people who had seen the program once to up to seven times (Kouassi et al., 2019). Foremost, bushmeat consumption in the rather isolated region on the western side of the Taï NP was strongly influenced by the socioeconomic situation of the households (Figure 3).
Poorer and larger families were the most likely to consume bushmeat, that was in the majority of the cases acquired directly from the forest by family members (Kouassi et al., 2019).
Directly relevant to our conservation program, we could show that the more frequently participants took part in such environmental awareness activities, the more they reduced their bushmeat consumption: After participating in the program four times, we saw a 65% reduction in their consumption of bushmeat ( Figure 4). F I G U R E 1 Proportion of primates consumed (a) west and (b) east of Taï National Park (from Caspary et al., 2001  F I G U R E 2 A scene of the play "The chimpanzees are our cousins" in the center of a village; the actors play the scene of a chimpanzee fatally injured by a poacher when the chimpanzee group members gather around the wounded one. As seen in this picture, the theater play could attract big crowds of spectators ranging between 400 to over 2000. The play is performed in the afternoon, and after sunset a film on the chimpanzees is shown to the audience, followed by a question session that could last well into the night F I G U R E 3 Rural households with more children (on the right) and with less income (in the front) were more likely to consume bushmeat (on the left) on the western side of the Taï  Our work in Taï NP demonstrates that though our human engagement activities were successful at reducing bushmeat consumption, there were other threats in the region also impacting the wild chimpanzee emphasizing the importance of a comprehensive program that can monitor all of the threats in a region.

| COMMUNITY WATCH TEAMS TO PROTECT THE SAPO NATIONAL PARK, LIBERIA
Liberia is one of the poorest countries in Africa and its agriculture is Liberia presents vast differences to Côte d'Ivoire affecting the way conservation work can become effective: Liberia has a 50% smaller human density but has a 50% higher forest cover with a three-times lower deforestation rate (www.mongabay.com). Importantly, a number of artisanal miners have been seen entering the forests to search for gold or other minerals ( Figure 5). Sapo National Park, the oldest park in the region, has not been spared from this threat (see the summary in Table 2 were all short-lived, partly due to the lack of permanent presence of protective actions in the area and the lack of involvement of the local communities. As can be seen in Table 2, the situation repeated itself over the years until, during the Greenville Conference in 2017, all stakeholders were able to reach a unanimous agreement in favor of enhanced protection. During the Greenville Conference in 2017, it appeared that communities living around Sapo NP actually wanted the same outcomes as FDA and partners: They want to protect the Sapo NP. They were angry because they felt that their ancestors had been able to preserve the forest for hundreds/thousands of years, but the protection was weak and the forest was being destroyed since the government/FDA had taken over. Therefore, during the Greenville Conference, they requested to actively participate in the protection of the park. and cameras (see Figure 6). As was seen in Côte d'Ivoire, our work continued to engage the local population, however, we used a very different approach that was specific to the location and needs of the conservation work.

| PRESERVING THE LONG-LASTING HUMAN AND CHIMPANZEE COEXISTENCE IN GUINEA
Guinea is home to the largest remaining populations of the West African chimpanzees, with about 53,000 individuals mainly in scattered populations (Heinicke et al., 2019). Due to the high prevalence of the Muslim religion in vast areas of the country, chimpanzees are quite well protected by a food taboo . However, the need for rapid development in the country has led to a boom in new mining projects threatening directly the survival of the fauna and its environment. As a response, the WCF is working with the private sector to implement a chimpanzee offset project aimed at compensating for the loss of chimpanzees resulting from the mining operations.
The distribution of chimpanzees is nation-wide in Guinea with the largest concentrations of them in the northeastern part of the Fouta Djallon (Heinicke et al., 2019;WCF, 2016). To achieve its national objective to protect 15% of the terrestrial national territory, To preserve this long-prevailing coexistence between humans and chimpanzees within the park, the WCF is developing an "in- Bafing NP teams facilitate and support all these activities at each level to ensure the main objectives of the park are fulfilled and that complaint and grievance procedures are in place. The higher levels at the rural communes and regions will help to integrate the VTMP into national and regional plans and benefit from government support.
The OGPR has recently required such a governance plan to be implemented for each of the protected areas in the country.
Though the WCF environmental education has an impact on the communities' behavior and newly recruited ecoguards provide the communities with direct benefits, the positive impacts of forest regeneration will require more time to be of an effective benefit to the communities. However, forest regeneration cannot work without control over the bushfires that run through the park every year; our analysis shows that 32% of the park is directly affected by bushfires every year and almost the whole park is burned once in 10 years (annual report, WCF, 2018b). Thus, similar to our projects in Liberia, in 2019 the WCF in Guinea employed as many as 1200 young people from the communities spread throughout the park as bushfire regulators. Due to the size of the Moyen-Bafing NP, the plan is to hire many more so as to permit an effective regeneration of the forest in the middle-term. This will then allow the animal population to increase, as well as the river systems within the park to flow more consistently.
The project is still only in its second year, and therefore, it is too early to talk about success or failure. What we can say today is that The five data sets combined are presented here for only one village as an example of how environmental threats and sociocultural data are combined to promote a landscape approach allowing for protecting high conservation value areas, regenerate the connectivity, and promote sustainable agroecological activities 3-4 years, the control of bushfires and hunting, with the regeneration of gallery forest along rivers and watersheds will hopefully promote an increase in the biomass of the ecosystem resulting followed by an increase in chimpanzees and other wildlife in the area.

| CONCLUSION
Returning to our earlier discussion of the conservation paradox that humans are both the problem and the solution to conservation issues, we have demonstrated some of the challenges in implementing such solutions. Even when the threats have been correctly identified and solutions are found, the individuals within the communities need to acquire the resources necessary to feed their families. It is often difficult to reconcile such short term needs with longer-term goals.
The present review of some of the approaches used by WCF illustrates the need to have a reliable understanding of the threats faced by the species of concern in each specific context. The conservation paradox to work with the same people that partly contribute to the biodiversity crisis is and will remain a challenge. The middle-term vision of conservation is sometimes difficult to reconcile with such short-term needs of families. Nevertheless, nowadays the tropics finding themselves at the forefront of climate change are confronted with these new challenges so that the communities include more frequently in their thinking the middle-term dimension than they did four or two decades ago.
The worldwide human population growth and the associated climate changes have confronted us, animal conservationists, with new and unexpected challenges following which we are expected to work with the very local communities that have contributed in part to the decline of the endangered animal species we want to protect. In addition, the scarcity of funding had many conservation projects finding themselves forced to contribute more to poverty alleviation than to achieve positive results for animal protection.
F I G U R E 1 0 Structure of the local communities to integrate their work within the Moyen-Bafing National Park (NP). "Conservation and development village committees" (CDVC) are created in each village to coordinate the different "General Interest Groups" and "Economic Interest Groups" that the villagers want to implement within their village (the figure lists some of the examples). The Moyen-Bafing NP teams are working with them to implement both the conservation and development activities. At the rural commune level, the CDVCs possess a "Communal Union" representing their interest, whereas a "Communal Assembly" is established to address issues that concern more than one village within the rural commune. Finally, a "National Consultation Board" allows for the integration of the CDVC interest into regional or national development policies through different national agencies, like the ANAFIC that is the national agency for local development financing  (Riezebos et al., 1994), so that access to good land to create fields has become harder and harder. This results in communities in that region becoming more open to the sustainability argument than they used to be, as well as discussing alternatives that are climate-resilient.
Similarly, in Guinea, belonging to one of the poorest regions in Africa, the effects of climate change are dramatic. It means that the local communities have witnessed year after year less rainfall, endured higher temperatures, and experienced decreasing soil fertility (B. M. Campbell et al., 2016;Challinor et al., 2014;Lebel & Ali, 2009). This all concurs to have the communities to resort to shorter rotation times in their slash-and-burn agricultural practice, which increases the deforestation of the area, and the water shortage issues. A practice the communities are largely aware that will increase their difficulties, but to which they have no adequate solution (socioeconomic study, WCF, 2018a). This allowed the WCF to propose to the communities welcoming solutions based on improving the forest cover to ensure more regular water flow in their rivers as well as higher biomass for the chimpanzees and other animals inhabiting the park.
Saving Apes through Engaging Communities is one example that has to become a reality in our present world. This paper presents some responses to how this could be done and shows that in some cases we do have data to show that it could be an effective means toward reaching our conservation goals.

| Recommendations
-A solution to the conservation paradox requires a good knowledge of the local situation so that different threats are identified and their relative importance is known allowing for the implementation of context-specific solutions.
-A flexible and dynamic evaluation program should accompany such a project so as to be able to react swiftly to any signs of degradation in the situation. This evaluation program should be done on the results of the target animal species and not only on the activities implemented as is done much too often.
-A sustainable solution to the conservation paradox needs the adoption of a middle term timeframe so that the specific activities adopted for the local communities can be evaluated over such a time period, as climate change preoccupations have to be included for any solution to reach sustainability.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the national authorities of the three countries that have made the work of the WCF possible, including the different min-