The founder of Tacugama sanctuary declared in the beginning of this work: "We need more solid understanding of the number of chimpanzees that live in the wild in Sierra Leone, the areas they inhabit, so that we can protect them and their habitat." Bala Amarasekaran has founded the sanctuary, which nowadays hosts 90 orphan chimpanzees, in the mountains that surround the capital Freetown.

The founder of the sanctuary affirms "one of our objectives is to be able to release our chimpanzees into the woods, but we can only do that if we identify and protect the area they are supposed to live. This census will help us a lot in our work."

PASA Executive Director, Doug Cress, declared: "This is another example of how a sanctuary can have a great value in the efforts for conservation." And added: "Tacugama is going to continue to take care of the chimpanzees for decades. But when it develops this work of looking for chimpanzees in the wild and for their habitat it will also be able to protect these populations, which shows its compromise with the conservation of the species."
 
The census will cost US$ 220,000 and will be coordinated by scientist Dr. Terry Bbncic. It will also have collaboration by Dr. John Oates, who will help through his deep knowledge of West African primates. It is estimated that the project will last one year.