To save wildlife, humans must ultimately change those behaviors that damage the natural world. Producing much of the food that we eat and the products we buy translates to increased threats to wildlife populations and their habitats. But exactly how much behavior change will make a difference for threatened species? How many people have to stop hunting them? How many acres of forest need to be saved from development? And how do we ensure that local human communities will follow through on changing their behaviors? These are the types of questions that CPSG is studying in an important project: chimpanzee conservation in Liberia.

In September, CPSG staff traveled to Liberia to start a series of workshops designed to improve the outlook for chimpanzees across Liberia – one of the last countries with a sizable chimpanzee population in western Africa. CPSG will lead an effort to build a detailed simulation model of selected Liberian chimp populations that will give insight into how much human behavior change is necessary to reduce threats to chimp populations and improve their chances for long-term survival.

Chimps in Liberia face threats from hunting, agriculture, logging, and mining. The need for food and money drive people to hunt chimps at unsustainable levels and destroy their habitat to develop the land or take resources from it. CPSG collaborated with Liberian experts to identify these threats to chimps and understand what human behaviors drive these threats. The group focused on local threats, pinpointing the regions where each threat was a problem. They also tried to evaluate the intensity of each threat to help set priorities for future conservation actions. 

CPSG will use this important local expertise to create a demographic model of Liberian chimp population dynamics. This working model can help to estimate the impact of a given threat on chimp reproduction and/or survival, and can identify management actions that are likely to be most effective in reducing that threat. For example, improvements to long-term population survival can be estimated if, for example, 10, 20, or 30 fewer hunters remove chimps from a given population. This gives conservationists aiming to change human behavior a practical goal to work towards in their efforts to reduce hunting or other threats to chimps’ survival.

This project to plan a better future for Liberian chimps through changing human behavior is a collaboration between Impact by Design, Inc., the Jane Goodall Institute, Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority, and Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection. It will unfold through a series of workshops in the coming years.

Photo Credit: Jean-Marc Astesana, CC BY-SA 2.0