Welcome to the August edition of our newsletter!

In the last couple of months, the world of western chimpanzee conservation has seen some interesting initiatives. We are excited to share with you some of these updates!

Get to know our community!

Continuing our series of introductions of representatives of the Western Chimpanzee Action Plan (WCAP) Implementation Committee (ImpCom), we are excited to present two more members.

To access the full list and contact information of all ImpCom members, consult the dedicated section on our website.

Over the last 10 years, he has contributed to drafting the ECOWAS Region Forest Convergence Plan and coordinated the drafting of a West African Strategy for Combating Wildlife Crime, as well as an Abidjan Aquatic Wildlife Partnership’ Action Plan. In his role of team lead for the USAID WABiLED program, he serves as representative of the Land Use Planning seat within the ImpCom.

In addition to his research, Clement is actively engaged in conservation planning, environmental education, and studying the socio-economic connections between biodiversity and public policy. With extensive experience collaborating with conservation partners and local communities across Liberia's protected areas, he serves as one the representatives of the Liberia seat within the ImpCom.

Parallel to her research, she is increasingly engaged in discussions of chimpanzee conservation at the international and policy levels, with the goal of better bridging and streamlining our collective efforts to save this critical species, and to connect top-down policies to meet and support real world applications. She has worked at a number of different institutions in her career, including the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), Harvard University (USA), and the University of St. Andrews (UK), and is now based in Göttingen (Germany), where she leads a research group focusing on the intersection of ape behavioral ecology, evolution, and conservation.

In addition to coordinating the activities of the WCAP Regional Coordination and its Implementation Committee that produces this newsletter, she is co-director of the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project in Guinea, and of the BonDiv Project aimed at understanding bonobo diversity and their conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Finally, she founded and co-leads the Working Group on Chimpanzee Cultures, and actively engages on these topics across multiple policy arenas.

Maliasili: accelerate community-based conservation

through local organizations

This month, the WCAP coordination team had the pleasure of interacting with representatives from Maliasili, an organization dedicated to addressing ecosystem damage and degradation by promoting community-based conservation and natural resource management. Maliasili exists to support high-potential, local African conservation organizations in accelerating the benefits they bring to people, ecosystems, and climate change. Since its founding over a decade ago, Maliasili has built a portfolio of more than 40 partners working across 35 million hectares of critical landscapes and ecosystems in 13 countries. Maliasili has helped its partners strengthen their organizations, generate or leverage more than $15 million in funding for their work, develop a growing set of tools to improve organizational performance, and significantly expand their impact in the field.

As Maliasili has grown in experience, profile, internal capacity, and scope of work over the past several years, they have looked to respond to growing interest and need from a wider range of African organizations to expand their work beyond eastern and southern Africa. In West Africa in particular, they have observed a vibrant local civil society space that is perennially underfunded and under-resourced. Accordingly, Maliasili’s long-term goal in West and Central Africa is to identify and support a portfolio of key organizations at the forefront of community-led conservation to accelerate and grow their impact and to support them in expanding successful conservation models that protect coastlines, forests and species while generating benefits for local people.

Are you part of a local organization that would like to engage with Maliasili? Or are you simply interested in getting to know Maliasili's work more? Feel free to visit their website or reach out directly to Salisha Chandra, Maliasili's Strategic Initiatives Director, at schandra@maliasili.org.

We need your help!

As one of the most charismatic flagship species, Western chimpanzees often draw significant attention for conservation efforts. However, they are just one of many threatened species in West Africa, where numerous other species and landscapes also need protection. Preserving these can also benefit chimpanzees.

If you are aware of or are working on an Action Plan for specific species or landscapes in West Africa, please get in touch with us at info@westernchimp.org.

We would love to hear from you!

A Centralized Funding Database for western chimpanzee conservation

Searching for funding opportunities can feel overwhelming. It's often difficult to know where to start, and important opportunities to finance research and projects can slip by unnoticed. To support you, as conservation stakeholders in West Africa, we've created a Centralized Database where you can easily access funding opportunities and grants that are relevant, even indirectly, to western chimpanzee conservation. This database relies on user submissions, so we encourage you not only to use it to find available grants, but also to upload any funding opportunities you come across that you think might be of interest to the community.

Among the opportunities listed in the database, the British Ecological Society’s Small Research Grants, offering up to £5,000 for scientific ecological research in areas with limited funding options, has a submission deadline of September 11, 2024.

Another opportunity is the Darwin Initiative Innovation Grant, which provides up to £200,000 for projects that explore innovative approaches to biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction, with applications due by October 21, 2024.

You can access the Database here (both in English and French), where you'll also find instructions on how to upload grants.

This newsletter is distributed to stakeholders of western chimpanzee conservation. If anyone in your network is interested in receiving future newsletters and staying informed about western chimpanzee-related content, please direct them to this brief form to share their contact information with us: EN | FR | PT.

Do you have an announcement you would like to make, or an activity you would like to highlight? A success story you would like to share? Please get in touch so we can include your story in the next bimonthly newsletter!

For inquiries or submissions, please contact us at info@westernchimp.org. We welcome your engagement and questions!

You can access the French version of this newsletter, as well as past editions, on our website.