PASA NEWS
 
Gregoire lived for 40 years isolated in a substandard zoo. In 1997 he was taken, by plane, to Tchimpounga Sanctuary, when the civil war was exploding in Congo Brazzaville, and the zoo was a zone of the conflicts.

It is estimated that Gregoire was 66 years old. He resisted to everything that the human insanity can produce. He has converted in a symbol in his country and in Africa, and maybe he was the oldest chimpanzee of the continent.
 
Gregoire died sleeping in last September 17th. Doug Cress, Executive Director of PASA (Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance) declared: "Gregoire represents the long and hard life of many primates in Africa. He was a victim of the chimpanzees\’ extinction crisis caused by hunting, before it became an international cause. And his ability to resist for so many years alone in Brazzaville zoo is a demonstration of his inner power."
 
In the last years of his life, Gregoire appeared in news reports of BBC and National Geographic. In the last few years he was living with other chimpanzees in an enclosure with an external and an internal space in the sanctuary, very different from the life he had in the zoo for 40 years, in a tiny and concreted cage.
 
Jane Goodall found him in Brazzaville in 1990, and got astonished: "He was pale, his skin had very few hair and the bones of his body could be seen under his skin. His tired eyes looked at the visitors at the same time his hands, with the bones almost exposed, were asking for food. Then she asked herself "Is this a chimpanzeeω"