- Camera traps laid by WCF captured video of 23 species, including western chimpanzees and a pygmy hippopotamus.
- WCF worked with local authorities and communities to place camera traps in 500 locations throughout the park.
- Grebo-Krahn National Park was established in 2017 as part of an effort to turn 30% of Liberia’s forests into protected areas.
A camera trap survey has captured 23 different species of wildlife walking through a remote rainforest in eastern Liberia, including western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and the elusive pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis). The traps were part of a biodiversity study being carried out by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) in Grebo-Krahn National Park, a newly designated protected area along Liberia’s border with neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.
WCF says it’s releasing the video to raise awareness of the rich biodiversity of Liberia’s rainforests, which are home to about one-fifth of West Africa’s remaining population of western chimpanzees, a critically endangered subspecies. Annika Hillers, country director of WCF’s Liberia office, called the video “a joy to all nature-lovers.”
Nearly half of the remaining Upper Guinea rainforest lies in Liberia, which has promised to turn at least 30% of its forests into protected areas. The Grebo-Krahn park was established as a part of this effort, after years of delicate negotiations between NGOs, the Liberian government, and forest communities living nearby.
Cameras were placed in 500 locations and operated for eight months between December 2019 and August 2020 throughout the 96,150-hectare (237-592-acre) park, according to Hillers.
The seven-and-a-half minute video is a rare glimpse into life in the dense, remote forests of Liberia along with some of the unique creatures that inhabit them.
Banner image A Diana Monkey (Cercopithecus diana) in Grebo-Krahn National Park, Liberia, captured on a camera trap by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation.
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