What is the WCF?



The WCF is a multi-national foundation created and advised by individuals who join efforts to preserve as many as possible of the remaining wild chimpanzee populations and their natural habitat throughout their range in Africa.



ChimpanzeeChimpanzees are at the edge of extinction; their disappearance will not only be another impoverishment of our world as such, but, due to the chimpanzee`s close evolutionary relationship to human beings, it will also be the loss of a living link to our own history and evolution.



The main objectives before the WCF are to establish:



* a "Pan-African Forest network for chimpanzees", with the aim to assure protection of 20 to 25,000 chimpanzees, and

* a "Pan-African monitoring programme" to guarantee the preservation of the forest network by involving local people and by increasing our knowledge of the chimpanzee populations being protected.



The philosophy of the project is three-fold, based on Education-Conservation-Research, involving the local human populations around the protected key sites, school children from developed and sub-Saharan countries, and scientists.



Three major conditions will guarantee the success of this project:



* reinforcing potential sites for the protection of key chimpanzee populations

* reducing poaching at these sites, and improving human/chimpanzee co-existence

* ensuring that conservation and development policies include environmental interests