This lonely chimp in Rwanda
needs your help.
Photo: Great Ape Trust of Iowa

by Brook Wilkinson

This chimp is in trouble. He's one of just 13 survivors in Rwanda's tiny Gishwati Forest Reserve, a once enormous wilderness that has shrunk to just 1,500 acres. If something doesn't change, this chimp is doomed: such a tiny genetic pool can't last much longer.

Ted Townsend tracked me down in New York last week (where I was attending Condé Nast Traveler's World Savers Congress) to talk about his plan for Gishwati. Townsend is the founder of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, a research institution that works with our nearest mammalian kin to better understand how our minds work. He's in the process of creating a national park at Gishwati, and eventually a wildlife corridor that will link it to Nyungwe National Park, 30 miles to the south and home to a healthy and large population of chimpanzees.

Townsend hatched this plan with Rwandan president Paul Kagame at last year's Clinton Global Initiative, and was back in town for this year's meeting to boast of his successes so far: He's hired a Rwandan project director, and he's brought in a scientist from the University of California-Davis to study the remaining chimps. Townsend estimates that he'll need $5 million to buy and reforest land in Gishwati and along the forest corridor. As soon as the chimps are ready for human contact, he's eager to start eco-tours to the park. If you'd like to help, you can contribute to the project at the Great Ape Trust Web site. Assuming things go well, we'll all be able to visit these primates in a few years. 

Further reading:
* The Great Ape Trust of Iowa
* Condé Nast Traveler's World Savers Congress on the Daily Traveler
* Responsible Traveler