PASA NEWS

Lottie, 19 year-old female chimpanzee, who was reintroduced to the wild in June 2008 in Guinea, after live for year at CCC (Center for the Conservation of Chimpanzees) Sanctuary, West Africa, has given birth to an apparently health baby.

CCC’s director, Estelle Raballand, informed that Lottie was part of a group of 12 reintroduced chimpanzees, together with an oldest son born in captivity. The possible father of the new baby is chimpanzee Robert, also reintroduced at the same time. Nevertheless, Estelle considers that there is a possibility of the father is another chimpanzee, as long as the initial group had split in the forest. Estelle told: “we followed them from a distance in the wild. Sometimes we have eye contact with them once or twice a week. Last week we noticed that there was a baby in the group.”

The majority of the chimpanzees of this sanctuary had been born in the wild, but was captured by poachers and authorities ended up confiscating them and delivering them to the sanctuary.

According to PASA’s executive director, Doug Cress, “this birth is a fantastic development”. And added: ‘The birth inside of a reintroduced group is a great sign of success in the operation and in the adaptation of the primates in the wild again.”

CCC Sanctuary still hosts 35 chimpanzees, who wait for the possibility of a reintroduction, the same as other 825 chimpanzees along African sanctuaries. CCC Sanctuary was founded in 1996 and is one of the seven members of PASA that manages reintroduction programs.