Trafficking of African primates from Africa to Asia was thwarted with confiscated animals repatriated and sent to accredited PASA member sanctuary
December 28, 2023 – A few days before the year 2023 comes to an end and shortly before Christmas, a PASA* member sanctuary in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), J.A.C.K., welcomed the arrival of rescued monkeys seized in Togo. The animals were confiscated from an enforcement operation earlier this month in West Africa when Togo authorities in collaboration with wildlife investigation organization EAGLE Network intercepted 40 monkeys illegally trafficked from DRC and destined for Thailand. It was the largest international seizure of monkeys in Africa. Two monkeys were found dead in their crate by the enforcement officers in Togo. On December 22nd, the surviving monkeys were welcomed to J.A.C.K. Sanctuary in Lubumbashi, DRC.
This is the second large-scale international primate rescue of J.A.C.K in recent years. Two years ago, J.A.C.K. received 23 monkeys that were smuggled from DRC and intercepted in Zimbabwe following a wildlife enforcement operation and joint repatriation effort between the Zimbabwean and DRC governments, local conservation organizations, and PASA. Currently, J.A.C.K. is caring for more than 80 monkeys of various species that have been rescued from the domestic and international illegal trade.
Co-founder and president of J.A.C.K. Franck Chantereau said, “We appreciate the collaboration between the Togo and DRC governments who promptly repatriated the animals within days upon their seizure. It was like a Christmas miracle for these vulnerable monkeys, some as young as four months old, that have found a safe haven at our sanctuary right before the holiday season. The sudden influx of such a large number of animal arrivals is a challenging task for us, but when so many lives are at stake and depend on us, we must do all that we can to bring wildlife criminals to justice and provide high quality care for the rescued animals.”
Chantereau continued, “We are grateful for the support from organizations and individual donors who help us through this difficult time, juggling between building new enclosures and administering urgent medical care for these newly rescued animals. While the enforcement operation has successfully concluded, the hard work has just begun when our sole mission is to nurse the rescued animals back to good health.”
The traffickers produced CITES permits with fraudulent information, falsely stating the species and number of the animals being smuggled. The traffickers crammed the animals in inhumane, stressed, and unsanitary conditions, leading to the deaths of several monkeys during transport while the remaining were injured or in poor condition. The commingling of the dead monkeys with numerous injured ones destined for long transport – from DRC in Central Africa to Togo in West Africa with the final destination in Thailand – raises serious international public health concerns about potential zoonotic disease spillover. Had this smuggling attempt not been stopped in Togo, these injured animals could have been disseminated in Thailand and the dead animals tossed away by traffickers without proper health safety measures.
Most of the rescued monkeys that have arrived at J.A.C.K. are of species threatened with extinction such as Black mangabeys, L’hoest monkeys, Hamlyn’s monkey, and lesulas, which were only recently discovered and can only be found in the DRC. The confiscated monkey species come from different parts of DRC indicating a coordinated and deliberate network to capture a variety of species for international demand. The poaching of these monkeys from the wild represents a threat to biodiversity of the Congo basin and shows a disturbing trend in the ongoing exploitation of vulnerable primate species due to demand for exotic pets or for unscrupulous public display.
Iris Ho, Head of Campaigns and Policy of PASA said, “This largest international seizure of primates in Africa unfortunately is not surprising to us. It is indicative of the enormous challenge facing our three members in the DRC who have rescued more great apes and monkeys this year than ever before. Our members across Africa occupy an invaluable role in wildlife conservation by being a reliable partner of law enforcement and conservation partners when confiscations of live animals occur and providing them a caring home.”
PASA and J.A.C.K. appreciate the ongoing investigation by the Congolese wildlife authority, Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), and will continue to liaise with the ICCN leadership to ensure that the traffickers are brought to justice soonest. We will also continue to collaborate with ICCN to undertake conservation activities to address the root cause of poaching and wildlife trafficking of live animals in the country and to assist the government to effectively comply with international conservation measures such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
*Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) is the largest network of wildlife rescue centers and sanctuaries in Africa with 23 member sanctuaries in 13 African countries. www.pasa.org
Editor’s note: This article by Tracy Keeling makes some important points about increasing great ape trafficking and what CITES should be doing about it.
Opportunity knocks for wildlife trade body to step up for great apes. International demand for great apes in the zoo and pet industries is fuelling trafficking, but change could be on the horizon if CITES seizes the moment.
At less than one-year-old, Sana’s future is already partly decided. The tiny female chimpanzee is a trafficking survivor who has irreversible injuries. Due to these impairments, she can’t have babies on her own in the wild, as she will need to deliver by C-section. As studies also show, early trauma can scar chimpanzees throughout their lives. So Sana may grapple with social and emotional issues due to losing her family as an infant.
In other words, Sana has been robbed of a great many things in her short time on Earth. At the sanctuary where she now resides — J.A.C.K Primate Sanctuary (Jeunes Animaux Confisqués au Katanga) in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — other young non-human primates have endured similar losses. They also have peers in sanctuaries elsewhere in Africa, with rates of great ape poaching, infant capture, and trafficking attempts, variously growing in several range states since 2020, according to investigative findings published earlier this year.
Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos, are all endangered or critically endangered. So the Earth’s dominant great ape — aka humans — needs to respond forcefully to the trafficking problem and other threats going forward.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is holding a Standing Committee meeting between 6 and 10 November. At the event, Liberia is calling on the committee to back new proposals aimed at addressing the trafficking issue, offering some hope that action could be on the horizon.
A disaster
Sana arrived at J.A.C.K, along with Marie, a rescued blue monkey, in early September. They came to the sanctuary just a week before a dismal anniversary. On 9 September 2022, kidnappers snatched three young chimps — César, Monga and Hussein — from J.A.C.K in the middle of the night. The youngsters were never to be seen again.
Ransom videos sent by the kidnappers provided the last haunting images their human caretakers have of the chimps. But Franck Chantereau, who runs the sanctuary with his wife Roxane, is determined not to let their memory fade. He circulated a petition in the lead up the anniversary, urging people to sign it in an attempt “to keep their memory alive.”
“It is just a disaster and it seems that the world is not taking paying enough attention to the problem,“ he says. “I don’t know what is going to be left honestly in the next five to 10 years.”
The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance’s (PASA) head of campaigns and policy, Iris Ho, paints a similar dire picture. PASA is a coalition of sanctuaries, wildlife centres, and other partners, that works to protect Africa’s primates. It has 23 members located in 13 African countries.
Ho says that she was aware of 27 young chimp and bonobo rescues in the DRC alone this year by mid-September, while wildlife trade investigator Daniel Stiles warns that trafficking of infant gorillas picked up in recent months. The situation is certainly at crisis levels in central Africa, according to Ho, with the same being true to some extent in west Africa.
Stiles authored a report titled “Empty Forests: How politics, economics and corruption fuel live great ape trafficking” in April. Produced by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), it pointed to a surge in international demand for live African apes in recent decades.
Moreover, the organisations and entities meant to control illegal trade in great apes “are failing to do so,” according to the report.
Legal trade in apes
CITES has an integral role to play in addressing the issue of trafficking. It is the treaty body that regulates the international trade in many wild species, including great apes.
The body has three different appendices for species, depending on their known risk of extinction. Trade restrictions and permitting requirements for each appendix vary accordingly.
When the necessary criteria is met, non-commercial trade can be permitted for other defined purposes, such as zoos, circuses, and reintroduction to the wild.
CITES Wildlife TradeView records show that countries reported importing 188 live great apes as “direct” trade between 2016 and 2021. Direct trade refers to animals imported straight from their country of origin. Most of the apes were alleged to be bred or born in captivity and the transactions included some individuals listed as traded for commercial purposes.
Legal pathways for illegal trade
The existence of a legal trade in endangered species can provide avenues for illegal trade to happen. This appears to be the case with great apes, according to the GI-TOC report findings.
The report said that captive wildlife facilities involving great apes may operate as both breeding outfits and private zoos, with the latter seeing a massive proliferation in recent years. It further asserted that certain “captive wildlife facilities are increasingly acting as centres for laundering wild-caught animals and illicit trade.”
In comments to National Geographic, Stiles explained, “Registered zoos provide legal cover in the guise of rescue or conservation centers. They also offer laundering facilities for animals smuggled in and sold as captive bred.”
Co-founder of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection (LCRP), Jenny Desmond, shares these concerns. LCRP is a rescue centre in Liberia, founded by Desmond and her husband Jimmy, to protect wild and orphaned chimpanzees in the country.
Desmond says, “knowing that sophisticated criminals find creative ways to ensure their supply, the front of ‘sanctuary’ has become a way for traffickers to secure, source, and trade apes without any obstacles.”
Some traders also openly advertise apes on social media platforms, according to the GI-TOC report. It explained, “A video post of a chimpanzee infant dressed in children’s clothing, for example, can quickly reach numerous potential buyers. The trade deals are then negotiated out of public view, in private-messaging apps.”
Abuse of CITES’ captive-bred trade provisions is widespread, according to Monitor Conservation Research Society’s Chris Shepherd. It’s almost always cheaper and easier to capture wild animals than raise individuals in captivity, he says, and there is little meaningful scrutiny of captive breeding claims on the import and export sides of the trading chain.
This means that too often “the parent stock was harvested illegally or the animal that is being imported as captive bred has never been in a captive breeding facility and was directly taken from the wild,” Shepherd argues.
Rooting out illegitimate activity within breeding operations is essential because captivity-based sources make up a significant part of CITES-regulated trade in wild species.
Exporting countries reported more than 120 million direct animal trades by number — referred to as “specimens” — between 2016 and 2021. Over 68% of these specimens, excluding ranched animal trades, were allegedly born or bred in captivity, according to the body’s records. These figures include trade in various specimens, such as blood and tissue, skins, eggs, and other body parts or products derived from animals.
For direct trade in solely live individuals reported by number, captive births and breeding accounted for around 55% of the over 36 million animal trades that exporters reported during the period.
Countries also report trade in animals using other measures, such as kilograms, litres, and metres, so the above figures do not represent the entirety of trade in animals during the period.
Commercial zoos
Zoos were the destination for most traded live great apes in the CITES records. This industry enjoys its own purpose of trade category, separate to the commercial classification.
That zoos can be commercial entities is in no doubt. Indeed, the CITES Secretariat communicated by email that while some CITES parties use the Z code for all zoo imports, others use the T code in some instances. The Secretariat oversees the working of the Convention.
The EMS brief also highlighted examples whereby exporters variously utilised the Z code and the T code in sales of species to the same captive breeding facility, a disconnect that should raise alarm bells.
EMS suggested that determinations on whether captive wildlife facilities fall into the zoo or commercial category should partly depend on their financial activities and what they subject the animals to, such as using them in performances.
At a Standing Committee meeting in November, which is made up of country delegates representing various regions, CITES will take stock of its efforts to protect great apes.
It will review a report on great ape conservation and trade prepared by the Secretariat. The report contains recommendations that encourage parties to improve enforcement measures, collaboration, information gathering, and conservation.
Meanwhile, Liberia has submitted proposals to curb illegal trade in African apes for the committee to consider. It is asking the committee to recommend them for adoption at CITES’ next conference of the parties — CoP20 — which will take place in 2025. The committee decides matters by consensus or vote.
LCRP’s Desmond says Liberia has the world’s second largest population of western chimpanzees, along with the largest intact habitat for the species. She highlights that though national laws exist to protect them, “chimpanzees are under siege in Liberia with a loss of [an] estimated 10% of our population in the past 10 years solely through the rampant bushmeat and pet trades.”
Desmond adds, “Chimpanzee trafficking is local, regional and global. It is an immense and urgent situation. Regional and international collaboration, coordination, oversight, and shared intelligence are the only way we can combat this devastating crisis.”
Liberia’s proposals include calling for the creation of an African Great Apes Task Force. CITES has targeted task forces for other groups of species, such as big cats, and established one for apes in the past.
Having a dedicated task force for African apes would enable CITES to review and improve upon its existing commitments.
For instance, one of the CITES parties’ existing commitments is strengthening “anti-smuggling measures at international borders”. Despite this, the GI-TOC report asserted that apes are often trafficked across borders – mainly by air – with China, the UAE, and increasingly Libya, among the key ultimate destinations. The apes may be concealed in shipments of other species, using mislabelled documents, it said.
J.A.C.K’s Chantereau suggests the failure of countries to stop trafficked animals getting through borders could be addressed by involving experts in the identification process at customs. He also says that a wider rollout of electronic permits in CITES, which still largely uses a paper-based permitting system, would greatly help to reduce the use of fraudulent paperwork.
A task force could dedicate attention to these sorts of issues, along with the suspected abuse of CITES’ other relevant processes, and more.
PASA’s Ho cautiously hopes the discussions at the meeting will lead to some progress after great apes were largely left off the agenda at CITES’ last conference of the parties – CoP19 — in 2022. This omission, along with the Standing Committee failing to back prior suggestions aimed at ensuring apes receive focused attention, has left them somewhat “out of sight, out of mind,” Ho says.
Holistic action
Liberia’s submission also outlines other commitments that the Standing Committee could recommend for adoption at the next CITES CoP.
These include building databases of known captive and wild apes, using artificial intelligence technology and DNA, for better detection of the origin of trafficked individuals. Databases exist to detect wildlife crime in other instances, such as the DNA database built to tackle rhino poaching.
In addition, Liberia proposes the development of strategies to ensure that ape sanctuaries meet high operational standards.
Naturally, meaningful oversight of captive care facilities would be necessary to enforce high standards, which Desmond suggests could help to thwart the laundering of great apes by illegitimate operators.
More broadly, she says high standards are critical for the welfare of individuals and to ensure that genuine sanctuaries meet the “larger responsibility” they have, namely safeguarding endangered species.
Rescue centres do this by helping individuals in their care to “recover, thrive, learn natural behaviors, live with others of their kind, retain their languages, cultures, and genetic diversity, and so much more.” In turn, what rescued apes teach their caretakers informs global conservation efforts and “feasible future reintroduction of great apes” to the wild will rely on these populations.
“Standards of welfare and care become even more important when we consider both the individual and the species,” says Desmond.
Illicit trade in great apes is linked to deforestation and habitat loss, along with people’s livelihoods, Ho highlights, so collaboration across MEAs is important. Deforestation makes it easier for traffickers to access great apes in their forest homes, while habitat loss can push wild apes closer to human communities. Add in insufficient livelihoods and high consumer demand and it’s a perfect storm for trafficking.
Relatedly, another of Liberia’s suggestions calls for establishing projects with relevant communities focused on sustainable livelihoods and habitat restoration.
In a further recommendation, Liberia calls for supporting range states in preventing and mitigating zoonotic diseases, via their One Health Program. As the COVID-19 pandemic made clear, the wildlife trade poses a considerable risk of diseases being transmitted from other animals to humans and vice-versa. This is a threat to people and wildlife, which the holistic ‘one health’ approach seeks to address.
Villains and heroes
The GI-TOC report spotlights corruption as another major mountain to climb in tackling great ape trafficking. Corruption is an issue as old as (human) time and not one that is easily surmountable. But for as long as the world has had villains, it’s also had heroes. Thankfully, there is no shortage of the latter in the great ape trafficking situation either.
From communities and rangers that ensure apes are safe in their homes, through to rescuers and legitimate sanctuaries that liberate and nurture survivors, many champions exist. As Chantereau puts it, “you have heroes in Africa who are risking their lives trying to protect the last great apes.”
The surviving infant apes are also heroic, as are their families who perished trying to protect them.
Mpo’s story illustrates this well. When the young chimp was seized from traffickers, he was still clutching hair of a family member, presumably his mother. He ultimately let the hair go to take food from his rescuer, which Chantereau characterised as Mpo ‘choosing to survive.’
Summing up the courage to go on in the face of these young apes’ trauma is no small feat. Chantereau says when the sanctuary receives an orphan like Mpo, “you can look at him and, in his eyes, you can see he has lost everything. You can see he is empty.”
But very, very slowly, these young apes can gain in confidence and begin to trust their human caretakers. After all they’ve suffered at the hands of humans, through both exploitation and inaction, Chantereau says “they still have the grace to forgive us.”
Editor’s note: This article by Rachel Nuwer is based on the Global Initiative’s ‘Empty Forests’ report on illegal great ape trade. PEGAS has added a photo and links.
With baby gorillas fetching up to $550,000, the illicit trade is booming as demand for African great apes rises in China, the Middle East, and Pakistan.
BY RACHEL NUWERPUBLISHED MAY 9, 2023
Chimpu, a chimpanzee rescued from a smuggling operation in 2017, receives care at Central Zoo, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Two years later in a high-profile case, a Nepali court convicted five men of trafficking baby chimpanzees. [see https://freetheapes.org/tag/seized-chimpanzee/ PHOTOGRAPH BY SAMANTHA REINDERS, THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Great apes in Africa face the severe threats of habitat destruction and poaching for bushmeat. Now, they’re also increasingly targeted to supply international demand for pets and zoo attractions, according to a new report published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. So far this problem has largely escaped the notice of most groups tasked with protecting Africa’s great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, and two species of gorillas.
All four species are endangered—most critically—and are protected by national and international laws. But few groups or governments track ape seizures, making it difficult to know how serious a threat poaching for the live animal trade poses. Circumstantial evidence suggests the problem is significant and growing, says Daniel Stiles, an independent wildlife trade investigator in Kenya who authored the report.
“International policymakers, conservation organizations, and donor governments have not grasped the staggering extent of the illegal trade in African great apes,” says Iris Ho, head of campaigns and policy at the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), a nonprofit coalition of 23 primate sanctuaries in 13 African countries, who was interviewed for the report.
Working with a network of undercover investigators and informants, Stiles found that advertisements for live baby great apes are on the rise on WhatsApp and social media. Since 2015, he documented 593 ads for great apes posted by 131 individuals in 17 countries. Prices for the animals have quadrupled compared to a decade ago, with chimps now selling for up to $100,000, bonobos for up to $300,000, and gorillas for up to $550,000. The new report doesn’t cover orangutans, which live in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Most of the African apes go to China, Pakistan, Libya, or the Gulf States—especially the United Arab Emirates—where they become pets or, increasingly, attractions at private zoos. Some 10,000 zoos opened in China between 2013 and 2020, nearly doubling the total number, Stiles reports. It’s easier for locally registered zoos to obtain import permits for strictly protected species than it is for individual citizens, which helps explain zoos’ proliferation. “Registered zoos provide legal cover in the guise of rescue or conservation centers,” Stiles says. “They also offer laundering facilities for animals smuggled in and sold as captive bred.”
In most countries, once a wildlife facility is registered with local authorities, he adds, “you can call them zoos, rescue or conservation centers, sanctuaries—whatever you want.”
Private wildlife facilities offer laundering facilities for animals smuggled in and sold as captive bred. [Photo added by PEGAS]
Another sign of increasing demand is the escalating number of young apes taken in by PASA-accredited wildlife sanctuaries in Africa since 2019, Ho says. PASA sanctuaries look after more than 1,100 chimpanzees, the majority confiscated from traders. Rescued young apes require permanent care, but most PASA sanctuaries are already operating at capacity, and all are underfunded.
Stiles found that traders mainly source baby apes from the Democratic Republic of Congo and West African countries, especially Guinea. For every kidnapped baby chimp, poachers usually kill six to seven adults. Experts also estimate that five to 10 babies die from injuries, illness, or mistreatment for every animal that makes it to buyers abroad.
Traders smuggle some great apes out of Africa in legal shipments of monkeys or birds, the report notes. Increasingly, though, animals are brought to registered zoos, including in South Africa. Evidence suggests that these facilities obtain legal export permits for wild-caught great apes by falsely claiming the animals were bred in captivity.
‘I was tired of battling the bureaucracy’
Little is being done to stop this new trend in illegal trade, Stiles writes, in part because three of the most important international groups tasked with protecting great apes have yet to pay serious attention to the problem.
The Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP)—a United Nations alliance—includes combating illegal trade among its priorities. But according to Doug Cress, GRASP’s former leader, the group “barely functions anymore.” Cress resigned in 2016 because the UN agencies that were supposed to be supporting the effort never treated it as a priority, he says. “I was tired of battling the bureaucracy.”
Johannes Refisch, who took over GRASP’s leadership, says that “halting illegal trade is a priority.” Refisch pointed to an ape seizure database that GRASP launched in 2016 as the group’s “main instrument to better understand the drivers of illegal trade so that we can help address it effectively.”
Stiles says that when he requested access to GRASP’s database, in August 2022, he received “a ridiculous report” containing a table of seizure numbers that had no details attached about locations or dates, and no citations. “It had no data,” he says. “Totally useless.”
Refisch declined National Geographic’s request to view the database.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on endangered species, is home to an expert group dedicated to great apes, but it doesn’t prioritize illegal trade, according to Stiles. This stands in contrast to IUCN specialist groups for different species, which actively report on illegal trade. “Look at pangolins,” Stiles says. “No one even knew what the heck a pangolin was until the IUCN specialist group started reporting and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got tens of thousands of pangolins being trafficked’—and now it’s a big deal.”
“The IUCN,” says Dirck Byler, of the organization’s Primate Specialist Group, “considers all threats to great ape populations as serious, and many of its members have dedicated their professional careers to reducing or reversing the threats to great apes, including efforts to reduce the illegal ape trade.”
CITES, the global treaty to ensure that international wildlife trade doesn’t threaten the survival of species, lacks a working group dedicated to great apes, Stiles reports. At last year’s CITES conference, where representatives from 183 countries and the European Union met to make decisions about trade in endangered species, great apes weren’t even included on the agenda. “Because this trade is international, it falls under the purview of CITES,” Stiles says. “But CITES is not taking action.” [see https://freetheapes.org/2017/12/03/cites-again-ignores-great-apes/%5D
Ben Janse Van Rensburg, chief of the enforcement unit at the CITES Secretariat, says that individual countries are responsible for making sure trade in protected species remains legal. In cases where concerns are raised, he says, the Secretariat “has issued a statement to provide factual background.”
CITES member countries are also responsible for setting the agenda for discussion at conferences and meetings, he says, and for establishing working groups for specific species.
Stiles counters in his report that representatives from Niger, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and Uganda did attempt to create a CITES working group dedicated to great apes, in 2014 and 2016. But these requests, he says, were “refused” by the CITES representative chairing the meeting.
Iris Ho adds that in March 2022 Gabon, supported by Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria, requested—to no avail—that great apes be put on the agenda for the CITES conference later in the year. She says the U.S. also emphasized the importance of paying attention to this issue.
Without concerted global action, the problem will only worsen, Stiles warns. Already, he’s seeing signs that great ape trade is spreading to India. “If the international community does not begin to take great ape trafficking seriously, it will continue to grow, threatening the very survival of our closest relatives,” he says.
PEGAS has obtained the inside story of a joint Thai police and Freeland sting on a major wildlife trafficking network operating in South East Asia.
In police custody after the sting.
The Bangkok Post reported on 24th December that two baby orangutans had been seized and a trafficker arrested in Bangkok. The press report and a video story put out by the Associated Press stated that undercover police officers had arranged to buy the babies using a mobile phone app, but according to an anonymous source who wishes to be called ‘Nick’, the operation was much more complicated than the initial stories suggested.
“I live in Phuket,” Nick told PEGAS, referring to an island in the south of Thailand. “One day I and my partner Jeffrey visited the Phuket Zoo. We saw these two adorable baby orangutans there. The zookeeper let us hold them and have our photos taken with them. We just fell in love with them.”
Nick and Jeffrey hired an agent to find them two infant orangutans that they could buy as pets. The agent found what they were looking for on the Instagram account of a notorious wild animal trafficker, known to PEGAS first as @exoticpet88 and later as @exoticpetworld. Both accounts have now been closed as the owner has gone into hiding.
“He said his name was Tom,” Nick told PEGAS. “He was so polite, always saying ‘sir’ when he addressed me.”
This Instagram account advertised hundreds of exotic species for sale, many CITES Appendix I, which prohibits such commercial trade.
Exoticpetworld replaced exoticpet88. These are the two orangutans that were eventually seized in the Bangkok sting.
Tom sent Nick several photos of the babies using WhatsApp.
Tom asked USD 20,000 for the two orangutan babies. Nick agreed.
The trafficker arrested.
More to come after the Thai police conclude their investigations.
This article was published in Mongabay.com on 10th May 2016. https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/great-ape-trafficking-expanding-extractive-industry/
There are two main uses to which trafficked young apes are put: as pets or as attractions in commercial wildlife facilities (such as disreputable zoos, safari parks, circuses, hotels and use as photo-props).
The trade is facilitated by celebrities who pose with great ape pets in the press or in social media posts, which act as advertisements that say that owning an ape is “cool.”
Stiles has been investigating great ape trafficking for the past three years, since being invited to be a co-author of the United Nations report Stolen Apes, released in March 2013 at the 16th CITES Conference of the Parties in Bangkok.
Today his name is Manno and we believe he recently turned four years old, though he is small for his age. Manno has bright, inquisitive eyes, has a penchant for pumpkin seeds and loves to run and play. He has been living alone as the solitary chimpanzee in a small, private zoo in Duhok, Kurdistan, in northern Iraq for about three years.
“Manno turned up in 2013 with wildlife dealers in Damascus, Syria, as a traumatized baby orphan,” Spencer Sekyer told me. Spencer, a teacher in Canada, volunteered to help animals kept in the Duhok Zoo in Kurdistan in late 2014. He fell in love with Manno. “His mother was no doubt killed for bushmeat somewhere in Central Africa and the poachers sold him off to animal traffickers.”
Spencer has been trying to get Manno freed for over a year now.
Spencer showed me a colored piece of paper with prices written on it. “The owner of the Duhok Zoo paid US$15,000 for Manno, and the little chimpanzee has repaid the investment by becoming a very popular attraction. People come from all over the Duhok area to play and have their photographs taken with Manno… spending money.”
The zoo owner dresses the little chimpanzee up in children’s clothes and visitors shower him with food and drink that kids like — junk food. This probably explains why Manno is small for his age.
Manno eating pumpkin seeds bought for him by adoring zoo visitors. (Photo: Spencer Sekyer)
Two chimpanzees captured in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Manno very likely endured this before being smuggled to Syria. (Photo courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute)
If Manno stays in the zoo, the day will come when he stops being cuddly and playful. He will grow in strength and in aggressiveness, as is normal with chimpanzees. If he is not caged up permanently first, he will attack and no doubt seriously injure someone. His future is not bright.
No bright future
In fact, the future is not bright for any great ape that is trafficked. There are two main uses to which young apes are put: as pets or as attractions in commercial wildlife facilities (such as disreputable zoos, safari parks, circuses, hotels and use as photo-props).
The trade is facilitated by celebrities who pose with great ape pets in the press or in social media posts, which act as advertisements that say that owning an ape is “cool”. The coordinator of the United Nations Great Ape Survival Partnership, Doug Cress, warned that celebrities do not realize that many of the apes were obtained illegally.
“These pictures are seen by hundreds of millions of fans, and it sends the message that posing with great apes — all of which are obtained through illegal means, and face miserable lives once they grow too big and strong to hold — is okay as long as it’s cute. But it’s not. It’s illegal, and it contributes to the destruction of already endangered species,” Cress told The Guardian newspaper.
Paris Hilton holding an infant orangutan in Dubai, a known wildlife smuggling center. Photos like this on social media create the impression that it is trendy to keep ape pets. Photo via Instagram.
I have been investigating great ape trafficking for the past three years, since being invited to be a co-author of the United Nations report “Stolen Apes,” released in March 2013 at the 16th CITES Conference of the Parties in Bangkok. The report documents an alarming situation in which more than 1,800 cases were registered of trafficked chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans being lost to the forests of Africa and Asia between 2005 and early 2012.
This is only a fraction of the real number, as documented cases are those involving seizures by the authorities, and the vast majority of incidents go undetected. More tragically, for every live ape that enters the trade, at least one — the mother — and more than ten can be killed as collateral damage. The number lost is multiplied again because many infants die before reaching the intended destination.
I’ve traveled to West and Central Africa, the Middle East, and most recently made a trip to Thailand, Vietnam, and China, gathering information on this 21st century slave trade. I have also been discovering and monitoring a growing network of online wildlife traffickers, who post photos of their prized wildlife acquisitions and those for sale on social media sites. Unfortunately, recent publicity naming those involved in the illegal trade has resulted in them closing Instagram and Facebook accounts and going underground.
Publishing the names of online traffickers simply drives them underground where they can no longer be easily monitored. Composite of images found on Instagram.
Great apes are becoming increasingly expensive. Of a trade in December last year, Patricia Trichorache from the Cheetah Conservation Fund told me, “Right now there are two baby chimps about to be shipped to Dubai … $40,000 each.” An owner flaunting a $40,000 pet on Facebook or Instagram gains instant prestige. It is common to see friends’ posts saying, “I want one sooo bad,” followed by a string of heart emojis.
Dealers also use social media sites to market their wares. The usual routine is to move to the encrypted WhatsApp or Snapchat to conduct the negotiations after the initial contact is made on a photo post.
Traffickers commonly post apes for sale online to solicit buyers. Image via Instagram.
In the Gulf countries, infant chimpanzees and orangutans are commonly dressed up in designer clothes, made to wear sunglasses and baseball caps to look cool, and are fed junk food and taught to smoke. I’ve even seen chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons, and lion cubs all playing together in videos posted on Instagram. Sometimes the play goes too far and the little apes are terrorized, which only elicits laughter from the owner and his friends who gather in carpeted livingrooms to watch the “fun.”
The typical road a slave-ape takes in a commercial zoo or safari park starts with being used as a photo prop. When they get older they are usually trained to perform in some kind of entertainment show and after they reach puberty they are caged up to become a zoo attraction and to breed. Increasingly, dealers and zoos are breeding their own animals.
In Thailand, a large crocodile farm and zoo uses infant chimpanzees and orangutans as photo props, then cages them up for life when they get too old. Photos by Daniel Stiles.
The Egypt excess
Traffickers in Egypt were amongst the first to see the financial advantages in breeding great apes. A woman with dual Egyptian and Nigerian nationality had been trafficking chimpanzees and gorillas out of Kano, in Nigeria, and Guinea since at least the early 1990s, assisted by family members and an Egyptian pediatrician. Two of her clients run holidaymaker hotels in Sharm el Sheikh that used young chimpanzees as photo props with tourists.
Both hotel owners have since the early 2000s established wildlife breeding facilities for great apes and other animals. Chimpanzees and even gorillas are now being smuggled from these breeding centers to other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. They often go to Damascus first to pick up a CITES re-export permit, which corrupt officials issue for a price, so that they can arrive in the destination country with documentation that makes it look like a legal trade.
A baby chimpanzee from one of the Egyptian breeding facilities was seized in the Cairo airport last year during the security check, being smuggled to Kuwait, where infant great apes are in high demand.
Dina Zulfikar, a well known Egyptian animal welfare activist, followed the case of little Doodoo, as they named him. Dina told me, “The authorities did not follow procedure. They let the trafficker go and did not file a case with the police, as the law requires.” This is an all too typical story in countries with lax law enforcement.
Poor Doodoo now languishes in the Giza Zoo in precarious conditions. Dina recently informed me that his cellmate Bobo died of unknown causes, after another chimpanzee Mouza died some months earlier. The Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya offered to rescue the little chimpanzee and provide him with lifelong care, but the Egyptian CITES authorities thus far have not responded to the offer. Little Doodoo could join five other chimpanzees at Sweetwaters that were seized in Kenya in 2005 after being refused entry into Egypt, trafficked by the Egyptian-Nigerian woman.
Today Doodoo languishes in a rusting cage because the Egyptian CITES authorities refuse to allow him to go to a proper sanctuary. Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya has offered to pay all expenses to relocate him there, to join five other chimpanzees that were rescued from Egyptian traffickers in 2005. Photo by Dina Zulfikar.Doodoo with a zoo veterinarian shortly after he was brought to the Giza Zoo. He was found in the carry-on luggage of a trafficker smuggling him to Kuwait. Photo by Dina Zulfikar.
Ian Redmond, head of the U.K.-based Ape Alliance, worked with Dian Fossey and mountain gorillas in the 1980s, before Fossey’s untimely murder, recounted in the film Gorillas in the Mist. I work closely with Ian on the problem of great ape trafficking and he has tried, without success, to rescue the chimpanzees and gorillas held illegally by the Egyptian breeding facilities.
After a visit in 2015 to meet with the great ape breeders in Egypt, Ian told me, “Recent shipments out of Egypt seem likely to be infants bred at G. O.’s [name withheld] facility – if so we are faced with a different problem: essentially, a chimpanzee baby farm where infants are pulled from their mother and bottle-fed to be sold.”
The wildlife breeding facility in Sharm el Sheikh is on the grounds of this hotel. When the author visited it in November 2014 he witnessed the purchase of three addax, loaded in the crate in the back of the pickup truck. Addax are listed as Critically Endangered by IUCN and are CITES Appendix I. No addax are reported exported from Egypt in 2014 or 2015, although 12 are from other countries. Photo by Daniel Stiles.
The situation has been reported to the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), based in Geneva, but they reply that “it is up to the national CITES Management Authority to take action.”
Overlooked Fact
The number of great apes trafficked internationally every year is not large compared to some other species, but when the collateral damage is factored in we are talking about up to 3,000 lives lost from the wild each year, which is close to one percent of the great ape global population.
One important fact is overlooked when simply numbers are used to assess the significance of this extractive industry. Great apes are unlike any other species group. We humans share millions of years of evolutionary history with them and our genetic makeup is surprisingly similar — about 97% with orangutans, 98% with gorillas, and almost 99% with chimpanzees and bonobos. We all belong to the same biological family called Hominidae.
Increasingly, as more behavioral and genetic research is conducted, we are accepting more easily the fact that great apes are very much like humans in so many ways. Just recently, Jane Goodall was quoted as saying, “Chimpanzees taught me how to be a better mother,” indicating just how much great apes are similar to us.
Ian Redmond, who studies ape behavior, says that “Great ape mothers are incredibly protective of their children, which is why they are always killed when poachers go out hunting for infants to sell.”
All hominid mothers are incredibly protective of their children. Photos by GRASP and Daniel Stiles.
Beginning in the 1960s, the National Geographic Society was instrumental in funding the research of the Trimates — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas. These three exceptional women carried out long-term research respectively of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas, and orangutans. They made known to the world the surprising fact that characteristics previously thought of as exclusively human are shared by these intelligent, emotionally sensitive great apes.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, led by attorney Steven Wise, has been leading a mission in the United States “to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere ‘things,’ which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to ‘persons,’ who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty, and those other legal rights to which evolving standards of morality, scientific discovery, and human experience entitle them.”
The project is focusing on freeing captive chimpanzees, because a chimpanzee (and other great apes), as Wise argues, “is a cognitively complex, autonomous being who should be recognized as having the legal right to bodily liberty.”
A documentary film about Wise’s work, Unlocking the Cage, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January to a packed house and a standing ovation. It will be shown around the world on HBO in July. This film could very well be the hominid version of Blackfish, the film that brought the suffering of captive killer whales in marine parks to the world’s attention, and which has launched a campaign to halt this appalling practice. Sea World announced recently that it would halt killer whale breeding and phase out its theatrical shows using them.
Wise and his colleagues have been battling in court to free the chimpanzees Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo from inhumane captivity, and recently they gained a huge victorywhen it was announced that not only Leo and Hercules, but all of the 220 chimpanzees at the University of Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center, will be freed and sent to a sanctuary. Argentine courts have already ruled that an orangutan named Sandra deserved the basic rights of a “non-human person” and can be freed from a Buenos Aires zoo and transferred to a sanctuary. Likewise, New Zealand and Spain have extended personhood rights to great apes.
Legal systems are increasingly recognizing that it is immoral for nonhuman hominids to be bought and sold, put into captivity and suffer abuse for any reason. Currently, CITES treats great apes like any other animal or plant species. Although classified in Appendix I, which means that commercial trade is prohibited, great apes can be traded for “non-commercial” purposes if they satisfy certain criteria.
Creating exceptions to the prohibition on international trade in great apes tacitly accepts that it is appropriate for humans to own and imprison them. Once in captivity, it is very difficult to monitor whether they are being used for commercial purposes or are being abused in other ways.
Already, hundreds of great apes are being freed in Europe and the U.S. from biomedical research laboratories, and very soon chimpanzees from private commercial zoos in the U.S. will be liberated, due to changes in laws and understanding of the uniqueness of great apes. This is creating a huge problem of where to put them, once liberated. If all commercial wildlife facilities stretching from the Middle East to the Far East are included, it quickly becomes apparent that all great apes cannot be immediately emancipated after changes in law might come into effect.
Chimpanzees are free to roam and socialize as they wish in Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary on Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Although Sweetwaters can take 30 or more additional chimpanzees, this is not sufficient to handle all those currently held as a result of illegal trade. Photo by Daniel Stiles.
CITES must act
So what is the answer? Change should be planned, gradual, and move in stepped phases. The first step is stopping the illegal trade, which adds every year to the number that eventually will have to be freed. CITES could be instrumental in achieving this, but it is not implementing what needs to be done. Other organizations concerned with great apes also are not doing all that they could be doing. Attempts to strengthen CITES actions to crack down on great ape trafficking at the last CITES Standing Committee meeting in January 2016 were actually undermined by organizations that profess to be helping great apes.
CITES needs to put teeth into the resolution that deals with great apes. There should be a system of registration and monitoring of institutions and individuals that possess great apes, so that new arrivals and movements can be detected. Currently, great apes arrive illegally in countries and are internally transferred and re-exported with little monitoring. Zoo studbooks are often out of date and inaccurate, as my research has found. The CITES Trade Database records only a small fraction of great apes that are traded internationally.
The Orangutan Show at a safari park in the suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand, has been making use of trafficked great apes from Indonesia for years. Thai law prohibits these performances, which include boxing matches, and dozens of orangutans have even been seized and returned to Indonesia, but the safari park replaces them and carries on. There is no system of registration and monitoring in place, which would prevent such abuses. Photos by Daniel Stiles.
Will Manno and others like him ever be freed to live with others of his kind in a sanctuary, enjoying social life, natural vegetation, and security? Will the day ever come when unthinking people will realize that chimpanzees and orangutans are not playthings and objects of entertainment? They are our family members.
As Dame Jane Goodall says, “In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes.”
Author’s note: All social media photographs in this article are screen shots from accounts open to the public. In May of 2014 I began working with a project funded by the Arcus Foundation called the Project to End Great Ape Slavery — PEGAS for short. The project is sponsored by the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya and it works in association with the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary. See FreeTheApes.org. I am also Coordinator of the Ape Alliance Great Ape Trade Working Group. I invite readers to visit our page and sign the pledge to never use a great ape as a pet.
Thailand tourist promos advertise the country as the Land of Smiles, because the people are so welcoming and friendly. But a recent visit to Thailand by the head of PEGAS (the Project to End Great Slavery) turned up dozens of great apes that definitely were not in the mood to smile.
PEGAS found chimpanzees, orangutans and a gorilla held captive in appalling conditions, and many were being used in commercial activities such as circus type performances and props in pay-for-play photo sessions with visitors.
Top of the list of great ape horror shows were Safari World, Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo and Pata Zoo. None of these privately owned facilities are strangers to criticism and bad publicity. Many press articles and NGO reports and campaigns have been directed at them. What is surprising is that they continue to operate as if nothing had happened.
Safari World, for example, located less than an hour from downtown Bangkok, puts on a daily Orang Utan Show that gathers large crowds. Seven juvenile orangutans dress up as rock stars and pretend to play instruments while a young female obscenely go-go dances to blared music. Following the music show, orangutans engage in a boxing match, while a very young chimpanzee rushes in and out acting the clown.
Hundreds of people pay to watch captive great apes perform at Safari World.
Where did these apes originate? Not a single one could have been legally imported, according to the CITES Trade Database. Just as important, performances like that are illegal under Thai law. In 2004 the government seized 48 orangutans at Safari World for exactly the same offense and returned them to Indonesia, where they were met at the Jakarta airport by the Indonesian president’s wife.
“We are very happy to get the orangutans back,” Kristiani Yudhoyono said at a ceremony. “They belong to our vast nation…”. Now about ten more orangutans are back at Safari World.
A young chimpanzee plays the clown
In November last year, 14 orangutans confiscated at a Phuket island zoo were repatriated to Indonesia for doing the same things as seen at Safari World. No one was charged with a crime, even though obviously one had been committed.
Edwin Wiek of the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand, who was instrumental in having the Phuket orangutans confiscated and repatriated, said in August 2015 that “[the Department of National Parks] decision has sent a clear message to wildlife smugglers and zoos in Thailand that smuggled apes will never end up in the trade again.”
Fourteen orangutans were returned to Indonesia in November 2015. Will it be a deterrent? Photo: Claire Beastall, TRAFFIC
Apparently Safari World and the traffickers who supply them did not receive the message.
The owner of Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo missed the message as well. As soon as visitors enter they encounter baby chimpanzees, orangutans and tigers lined up in cages or cribs, there to be photographed. The zoo charges 200 baht (USD 5.60) for a framed photo with Meiya, a 5-month old female chimpanzee. Commercial use of great apes is supposedly prohibited if they are imported, as they are CITES Appendix I. If they are captive born, the facility must be registered with the government and receive authorization to breed that species, according to Section 17 of the Wild Animal Reservation and Protection Act of 1992. Permission to breed crocodiles does not extend to great apes.
Entering Samut Prakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo one finds baby great apes kept there to make money in photo sessions
It costs 200 baht to take a photo with Meiya
On the edge of the farm and zoo, away from where the crocodile and elephant shows take place, PEGAS found some rusting cages that housed a pitiful orangutan and several adult chimpanzees. Five were visible and an employee said that eight more were kept in cages out of sight. A recent animal welfare law prohibits cruelty to animals. It unfortunately does not define cruelty. Many would think that cooping up intelligent creatures in such deplorable conditions constitutes cruel imprisonment.
An orangutan and several chimpanzees are kept in old, rusting cages at Samut Prakarn
The last of the terrible three is the infamous Pata Zoo, opened in 1984 on top of a Bangkok department store. Its biggest celebrity inmate is Bua Noi, a female gorilla that according to the International Gorilla Studbook originated in Guinea – a country that has no gorillas. What Guinea does have, however, is a notorious reputation for illegal great ape trade. The CITES Trade Database has no record of a gorilla import from any country to Thailand, thus it appears Bua Noi was illegally acquired. She lives in solitary confinement and tourists have even reported seeing her gripping the cage bars and shedding tears.
Bua Noi exists solely to earn money for the zoo owner
The Pata Zoo also holds five orangutans and three chimpanzees in cramped cages, a long-standing animal welfare issue. It, too, puts on an illegal show, which includes an orangutan that lifts barbells, and young orangutans sit with minders outside waiting for tourists to pay money to have their photo taken with them.
Young orangutans of unknown origin sit outside the Pata Zoo to be used as money earning photo props
PETA Asia claims that “the conditions at the Pata Zoo are some the worst that PETA has ever encountered… The cages are extremely small and barren, and the animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them.” PETA has a campaign to close the zoo, but its license was recently renewed, and the zoo director Kanit Sermsirimongkhon said, “We have complied with all relevant laws”. Have they? Bua Noi and other great apes there were probably illegally imported, as they do not have CITES documentation.
PETA Asia has a campaign to close Pata Zoo
PEGAS visited several other zoos in Thailand as well, including Dusit, Lopburi, Khao Kheow and Korat. The seven orangutans and three chimpanzees found at Lopburi were living in dreadful conditions and are being used in illegal performances, but those at the other zoos were situated in well-designed enclosures with landscaping and amenities.
Lopburi Zoo
Lopburi Zoo keeps orangutans in a dark dungeon, except when they bring them out for weekend and holiday shows
In all, PEGAS estimates that there are at least 41 orangutans, 38 chimpanzees and one gorilla in nine facilities. In some, the animals could not be seen at the time of the visit. There are other great apes located in facilities not visited. Judging by records in the CITES Trade Database, some of the apes were probably illegally imported, although some were born in Thailand. Unless the facility has obtained express permission to propagate a species, even locally born apes could be illegal to possess.
Khao Kheow has a pleasant environment for the great apes
But a 6-year old female orangutan is kept outside for the money-making photo sessions
Why can’t the illegal exploitation of these sentient animals be stopped?
Because, as Edwin Wiek says, “It’s big business. Influential people.”
“There are ex-prime ministers that have chimpanzees and orangutans in their backyard. These are the kind of people that are opposing us,” said Wiek.
Just as with the problem of online wildlife traffickers in the Middle East, the solution has to start at the top. If the decision-makers in power are complicit with the crime, little can be achieved. Campaigns need to be directed at those at the very top of government. Only they have the power to change anything.
This article from The Dodo is based on PEGAS work…
By Sarah V Schweig 15 December 2015
Sometimes an exposé reveals a seedy secret world of animal exploitation and makes a huge splash.
And sometimes a dark world of horrific exploitation is hidden in plain sight.
A quick look online reveals a terrifying truth about the lives of orphaned great apes, who are being illegally bought by wealthy people in the Middle East who want to dress them up and keep them as pets.
“Almost all of these animals have been captured as infants from the wild, and been bought online,” the Ol Pejeta Conservancy wrote in a press release provided to The Dodo.
Ol Pejeta has started the Project to End Great Ape Slavery (PEGAS) with support from the Arcus Foundation, which seeks to develop a better understanding of the illegal trade in great apes by investigating websites that advertise apes for sale or display photos and videos of great apes as pets.
PEGAS collected the photographs in this article from online sites open to the public.
All great ape species are listed under Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), an international agreement that is supposed to ensure that international trade of animals and plants does not threaten their survival. This means that any commercial trade of these animals is illegal.
Illegal — and also horrifically wrong. According to Ol Pejeta:
The demand for great apes as pets, entertainment props, or for display in private zoos in the Middle East is fueling the large scale wild capture of infants in the forests of West Africa and Indonesia. In order to capture young chimpanzees, hunters kill the mothers and often the rest of the troop as well. Many of these infants die en route to their selling destination, as a result of rough handling, cramped transport conditions, stress and dehydration.
One such case was a baby chimp known as Little Doody.
Little Doody was discovered in the Cairo airport being smuggled into a plane bound for Kuwait.
Even though PEGAS offered to relocate him to a sanctuary, the Egyptian CITES office did not respond to the offer.
Little Doody was brought to the Giza Zoo. He now lives in a cage.
Ansoumane Doumbouya, the former Guinea CITES official arrested recently in Conakry for wildlife trafficking using fraudulent CITES permits, also signed permits for the export of bonobos to Armenia in 2011. No bonobos live in West Africa, they are restricted to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ofir Drori of EAGLE reports that Doumbouya has been transported to prison to be held for trial. An unsigned blank CITES permit was found in his bag!
The following story published in an Armenian newspaper gives some background and links to earlier stories about great ape imports to Armenia.
Arrest of Guinean Official Implicated in Illegal Animal Trade; Signed Export Permits for Armenia as Well
A bonobo smuggled into Armenia with a Guinea CITES permit
Ansoumane Doumbouya, former head of the CITES Management Authority of Guinea anda key player behind the illegal export of hundreds of chimpanzees and gorillas to China and elsewhere, was arrested on August 21.
EAGLE (Eco Activists for Governance & Law Enforcement) announced the arrest of Ansoumane Doumbouya, along with the infamous wildlife trafficker Thierno Barry, in Conakry, Guinea’s capital.
Hetq has the following CITES export permit, signed by Doumbouya in 2011, under which two bonobo primates were imported by the Zoo Fauna Art company in Armenia.
The CITES export permit signed by Doumbouya
A Hetq investigative series into the illegal animal trade in Armenia led to criminal charges against Zoo Fauna Art owner Artur Khachatryan.
The investigative division of Armenia’s Ministry of Finance has been dragging out an inquiry into the matter for one and a half years.
Even after he lost his position with CITES, Doumbouya retained a position within the Guinean Ministry of Environment as Commander of the national wildlife and forestry mobile enforcement brigade and was still signing CITES permits for traffickers.
Richard Vigne CEO, Ol Pejeta Conservancy Stephen Ngulu Deputy Manager, Ol Pejeta Conservancy Daniel Stiles Project Manager, PEGAS Tom Butynski Director of Research, Sustainability Centre Eastern Africa Alpana Patel Jane Goodall Institute, Kenya Yvonne de Jong Eastern Africa Primate Diversity and Conservation Program, Kenya
Project to End Great Ape Slavery (PEGAS) 