Great Ape Trust Director of Conservation Dr. Benjamin Beck, right, and Aaron Rundus install the "Chimpanzee Cam," a ground-level camera trap. Rundus is co-director of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program's Kinihira Field Station and a research associate for the program. Great Ape Trust photo.

Images offer insight into how apes spend their time in the forest

Des Moines, Iowa – December 19, 2009 - A remote camera trap dubbed a “Chimpanzee Cam” is allowing researchers to scientifically eavesdrop on 14 chimpanzees isolated in a pocket of Rwandan rain forest and learn more about the endangered population than they could through close personal observation alone.

Images from the "Chimpanzee Cam" help researchers learn about social groups among the 14 Gishwati chimpanzees. Great Ape Trust photo,

Use of technology to unobtrusively study the chimpanzees in a natural way has been an “enormous success,” said Great Ape Trust Director of Conservation Dr. Benjamin Beck. Great Ape Trust is partnering with the Rwandan government to found a national conservation park in the former Gishwati Forest Reserve to benefit climate, biodiversity and the people of Rwanda.

The findings of Great Ape Trust’s chimpanzee ecology study led by Dr. Rebecca Chancellor will influence planning of a 31-mile (50 kilometer) forest corridor to connect what’s left of the Gishwati Forest, once Rwanda’s second largest, with Nyungwe National Park. Video and still images from the Chimpanzee Cam have helped researchers conclusively identify eight of the Gishwati chimpanzees, learn who is traveling with whom and other insight into behavioral patterns. The information is important, Beck said, because “good conservation requires the good biological information that emerges from good scientific research.”

Following the chimpanzees as they travel along a trail can become a game of hide-and-seek, with the apes staying one step ahead of the researchers and possibly showing fear or other responses that are not typical of their everyday behavior.

“Chimpanzees are very elusive and behave in a way that reflects your presence,” Beck said. “Camera traps are another way to study chimpanzees without actually seeing or disturbing them, like nest surveys, fecal analysis, study of feeding remains and, in some cases, telemetry.”

“This strategy allows us to study the apes without having to habituate them to the presence of human observers, which is a long and laborious process, and could build an unwarranted level of trust by apes in humans.”

Remote monitoring doesn’t replace personal observation, but rather augments it. “When conditions allow, there is no substitute for seeing and studying the apes directly, close up,” Beck said, “but keeping it as impersonal as our emotions allow.”

The Chimpanzee Cam also helps program officials monitor human activity in the forest. In Uganda, a similar camera caught and identified poachers, who were later convicted on the basis of the photographic evidence.

One of Africa’s most unique and ambitious conservation efforts ever, the Gishwati Area Conservation Program aims to build a “Forest of Hope” in an area that had been so degraded by inefficient small-plot farming, ill-advised large cattle-ranging schemes and resettlement of refugees after the genocide that it had long been recognized as “beyond hope” by many non-governmental organizations pursuing conservation initiatives in Rwanda.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Great Ape Trust, is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of six bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities, and to six orangutans. To learn more about Great Ape Trust, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, go to www.GreatApeTrust.org.