For primate sanctuaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the year 2025 has begun with panic, worry and uncertainty as they are caught between the ongoing armed conflict in the eastern parts of the country and a controversial request from the country’s conservation authority, the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, or ICCN).

“Everybody is really worried,” said Sara Rosenberg, who volunteered at the two-decade-old Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Centre (CRPL) in Lwiro village in DRC’s South Kivu province, where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have recently captured the province’s capital city and the airport. “The war is really bad news for the wild chimps, and now the safe ones are also now at risk.”

The risk she’s talking about stems from an out-of-the-blue request letter handed to the Lwiro sanctuary on Jan. 7 by officials from ICCN’s headquarters in DRC’s capital city, Kinshasa, who were at the sanctuary’s door. The letter requested that the sanctuary transfer 12 chimpanzees to the Kinshasa Zoological Garden located more than 2,200 kilometers (1,367 miles) away. The sanctuary is currently home to more than 120 chimpanzees.

Four days later, on Jan. 11, ICCN sent a follow-up letter addressed to the Lwiro sanctuary director, justifying its request for “preferably juvenile” chimpanzees. The letter, which Mongabay has a copy of, noted that during ICCN’s 10th session on Dec. 30, 2024, its board of directors instructed the general management to engage in a “vast program of development, rehabilitation, repopulation and scientific studies” that aims to “better protect and conserve the species of great apes of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” including endangered eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

However, the Lwiro sanctuary refused to part with its chimpanzees and alerted the local government, provincial ICCN representatives and civil society organizations.

Surprise request raises suspicions, faces opposition

The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to three Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA)-accredited ape sanctuaries, including the Lwiro sanctuary, which was set up by the ICCN and the Natural Sciences Research Center (CRSN in French) in 2002 to rehabilitate primates seized from poachers or traffickers.

In its justification letter, ICCN stated that according to a 2016 agreement, ICCN is the “exclusive owner” of the chimpanzees and other primates at the Lwiro sanctuary and that it has the right to recover them for “reasons of higher interest of its service.”

“They were really surprised by this request, especially because ICCN is a close partner,” Rosenberg said, talking about the Lwiro sanctuary staff’s reaction. “Lwiro has been the first sanctuary to be officially asked to give chimps away.”

Civil society organizations in South Kivu vehemently opposed this request. In a statement dated Jan. 13 and signed by seven civil society organizations, they said ICCN’s decision to transfer 12 chimpanzees to the Kinshasa zoo “does not provide guarantees that reassure either civil society, or experts in the field,” that they will be rehabilitated in the wild, and therefore “reinforces suspicions of a probable sale of these chimpanzees to international firms.”

All species of great apes, including chimpanzees, are listed on CITES Appendix I, which prohibits their international commercial trade and permits trade only under exceptional circumstances such as zoo-to-zoo transfers, scientific research and captive breeding.

In its part, ICCN has denied this accusation of selling chimpanzees. In an interview with Mongabay Africa, chief site director of the Kinshasa Zoological Garden Matata Ngirabose Bruno, who also headed the ICCN mission that visited Lwiro, categorically said his organization does not “sell the animals” and that it has never done so in the past. “I have been in this institution for 20 years; I have never sold the animals.”

In a Jan. 14 press release following the opposition and local media reports, ICCN stated that it has set up “an innovative program to strengthen the role of botanical and zoological gardens.” The program, it said, would run over five years, 2024-28, at Kinshasa and Kisangani zoos, and includes the rescue and recovery of endangered species, training Congolese experts, development and rehabilitation of infrastructure, scientific research and experimentation with “reproductive techniques.”

ICCN also chided the media for the “gratuitous and emotional assertions” about the mission at Lwiro and reiterated that repopulation, rehabilitation, rescue and conduct of specialized studies on the chimpanzees “falls within the mission of the Institute.”

It further stated that its “vast program can only be based on individuals coming from sanctuaries or from rehabilitation centers,” such as the 12 juvenile chimpanzees from the Lwiro sanctuary, and acknowledged that “a sanctuary remains an ephemeral stabilization environment for animals which have been poorly treated or traumatized in the past (injuries, stress, etc.).”

Dilapidated zoos not an ideal destination

The Kinshasa Zoological Gardens, where ICCN plans to set up its “innovative program,” which includes breeding chimpanzees, is a facility in shambles. After years of neglect, there were plans to rebuild it, but they have been delayed for years. Without the necessary infrastructure and enclosures to house the chimpanzees, conservationists question what, exactly, ICCN plans to do by bringing them to the zoo.

“Kinshasa zoo is a horrible place for chimps,” Rosenberg said, showing some pictures of thin chimpanzees in cages with excrement and other waste strewn around that she said were recent images from the zoo. “They are dying, they are malnourished and [the authorities] don’t have the money to take care of them.” Among those photos are a few juvenile chimpanzees kept in enclosures covered in tarps. No zoo that has a plan for renovation takes new animals, she added.

Josué Aruna, who runs the Congo Basin Conservation Society, a local NGO in South Kivu that is a signatory of the Jan. 13 letter, said his organization’s decision to oppose the request came about partly because the destination zoos “could not be the priority of the project” given their current state.

Aruna said the requested chimpanzee transfer violates PASA regulations, which prohibit selling, exchanging, lending or trafficking animals that are in PASA member sanctuaries, except in situations deemed to be in the best interests of those animals. The current zoos, he said, aren’t the best places for the already traumatized chimpanzees.

Both Rosenberg and Aruna said that instead of acting unilaterally, ICCN must heed primate experts and partners in the field to chart out a better future for the chimpanzees.

Ofir Drori, founding director of the EAGLE Network, an NGO that specializes in wildlife investigations and law enforcement, said the juvenile chimps in the photographs are relatively new residents in the zoo. “All of a sudden, over a very short time, we saw a gathering of baby chimps, which was very suspicious,” he said, adding that it’s unclear where they came from. “What is 100% [sure] is that they are not captive bred and [are] wild caught,” Drori said, as there are no captive breeding facilities for chimpanzees in Africa.

In the past, ICCN officials have been accused of corruption and facilitating wildlife trafficking. In 2023, the U.S. State Department banned three ICCN office bearers from entering the United States, including the former director-general, citing that they “abused their public positions by trafficking chimpanzees, gorillas, okapi, and other protected wildlife from the DRC, primarily to the People’s Republic of China, using falsified permits, in return for bribes.”

In December 2023, Togolese authorities intercepted 38 primates at the airport that were being sent from Kinshasa to Thailand, which included many threatened species such as black mangabeys (Lophocebus aterrimus), L’Hoest monkeys (Allochrocebus lhoesti) and Hamlyn’s monkeys (Cercopithecus hamlyni). Togolese authorities found that the number and species of animals present in the shipment did not match the export permits signed by ICCN.

“Our closest relatives are driven to extinction by trafficking and corruption, now our investigations show that Congo’s orphaned apes that survived the slaughter of their families are at imminent danger once again by the same enemy,” Drori said in a statement. “We have to fight corruption to save these orphaned apes and stop the DRC government plan.”

DRC conflict adds to an uncertain future for sanctuaries

The seizure of Goma airport in late January by the M23 rebels as part of the ongoing conflict in eastern DRC and its subsequent closure has, for now, paused any chimpanzee transfers out of the Lwiro sanctuary. In a letter dated Jan. 23, ICCN invited representatives from sanctuaries in the country for a meeting in Kinshasa on Jan. 30, which, Rosenberg said, had to be canceled because of the war.

By mid-February, the rebels captured Bukavu, the capital city of South Kivu, and the airport in Kavumu, which is also the closest town to Lwiro. While sources at the sanctuary have confirmed to Mongabay that the chimpanzees are safe for now, they say it has become challenging to procure food for them and provide them with the best care.

“It’s already been difficult for the people, for the chimps, and more war will mean more poaching because either people will take them for the money or for food,” Rosenberg said. “If these chimps disappear, I will go look for them everywhere in the world.”

Banner image: An endangered eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). Image courtesy of Rod Waddington via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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