 In the face of precipitous declines, the future of wild gorilla and chimpanzee populations is threatened. The principal reasons for these declines vary across Africa, involving habitat loss in west and east Africa, widespread commercial hunting in central Africa, and the devastating effect of Ebola in western central Africa.
Despite evidence of population declines in many areas, little is known regarding how fast these are occurring and how many apes remain. This knowledge is critical for persuading policy makers and the general public to take action and to target effective management actions at a local scale. Quantitative data on ape distribution and abundance is essential in the development of solutions to slow the decline and ensure the future conservation of ape populations.
Surveying apes is not easy. Traditional ape survey techniques are too inflexible to perform equally under varying environmental conditions; they are prone to biased results or require an enormous amount of resources to deliver reliable estimates of ape populations.
In this context, cross-disciplinary research in the Department of Primatology focuses on the improvement of existing methods and the development of new and innovative techniques. We are implementing these approaches in new or existing Bio-Monitoring Programs in the field.
The current projects cover:
- Comparative studies of existing ape survey methods
- Validation of existing survey methods in area with known ape density
- Survey of isolated chimpanzees populations via genetic capture-recapture methodology.
- Development of new field techniques for data collection and set up of bio-monitoring programs
- Evaluation of the potential for using camera traps in great ape surveys
- Application of satellite imagery, remote sensing and GIS for great ape surveys
- Development of modeling techniques to analyze great ape survey data
We are working to compile existing ape survey data from the last three decade in a centralized database. Specifically, since the beginning of 2005, we are working in cooperation with Harvard University - Woods Hole on the development of the A.P.E.S. (Ape Populations, Environments and Surveys) database.
 Many of us are active in collaborative projects with WCF (Wild Chimpanzee Foundation: www.wildchimps.org)
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