Residents near a chimpanzee research facility in Guinea attacked the center on Friday after a woman claimed one of the animals had killed her infant, according to the center’s managers.
An enraged mob looted and torched equipment, including drones, computers, and over 200 documents, the managers reported. Eyewitnesses said the assault followed the discovery of the mutilated body of an infant 3 km (1.9 miles) from the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Seny Zogba, the child’s mother, recounted to Reuters that while she was working in a cassava field, a chimpanzee approached from behind, bit her, and dragged her baby into the forest.
Local ecologist Alidjiou Sylla noted that the diminishing food supply in the reserve is driving the animals to venture outside their protected area more often, raising the risk of such incidents.
The research centre reported six chimpanzee attacks on humans within the reserve this year.
West Africa’s forests in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone host the largest population of critically endangered western chimpanzees, which have seen an 80% decline from 1990 to 2014, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Only seven remain in Guinea’s Bossou forest, part of the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, near subsistence farming communities in the Nzerekore Region.
In Guinea, chimpanzees are traditionally respected and often given food as gifts, leading some to leave protected areas for human settlements, where conflicts can occur.
Additionally, the Nimba Mountains house one of Guinea’s largest iron ore reserves, raising environmental concerns about the effects of mining on chimpanzee habitats.
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