Famous chimpanzee sanctuary faces existential threat from illegal land grab

Published

2 months ago

June 3, 2025

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There is a distinct moment when the tranquillity of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary envelops our car as we drive higher up the mountain.

The buzz of Freetown gives way to the hushed calm of this pocket of pristine rainforest reserved for critically endangered western chimpanzees rescued from across Sierra Leone.

The quiet is necessary. These bright primates – closest related to humans in the animal kingdom – are easily disturbed and the ones living in Tacugama are particularly sensitive.

The more than 120 chimpanzees brought here are traumatised survivors of mistreatment, hunting and violent separation from their families in the wild.

They are now facing another existential threat. Illegal encroachment is eating away at the edges of the conservation area. Despite wildlife laws, forest has been cleared to make way for houses being constructed closer and closer to chimp enclosures.

“We’ve been issuing several warnings over the last year,” says Tacugama founder Bala Amarasekaran. “Four months ago – again – we gave a warning. Then we had presidential intervention say that some of this encroachment will be stopped. It started very well for the first month then everything stopped again and we are back at square one. So, we are very tired and very stressed.”

Thirty years ago, Mr Amarasekaran appealed to the government to donate land and partner with him to create a sanctuary for the protection of the abused orphaned chimps he was finding across Freetown. Today, land in the Western Area Forest Reserve is being grabbed right under the government’s nose.

“The government has been very good in terms of helping us in every way – however we expect the leadership to be more firm,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

“When we talk to them, they are all with us. They all want to help. But when it comes to action it looks like some of the departments that have the mandate to institute certain laws and take the necessary law enforcement action are not acting.”

Sanctuary closes its doors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research

Tacugama has grown to become Sierra Leone’s most popular tourist attraction over the last three decades. But in a stand against the fast-approaching illegal encroachment, the sanctuary has closed its doors to visitors to focus on conservation, rehabilitation and research.

“It is not a tourist attraction – we made it become a tourist attraction. It is supposed to be an orphanage for rescued chimpanzees,” Mr Amarasekaran says.

“They are used to us and some visitors but they will start to see strangers come and that is where the problems start. They are not comfortable with strangers – don’t forget it is the stranger who killed their mother. It is the stranger that wiped out their group.”

‘A complex problem’

We asked Sierra Leone’s government spokesperson and minister of information and civic education, Chernor Bah, about the illegal encroachment.

“It is a complex problem. You have a city that is growing. People need places to stay and we have not done the best job in terms of enforcing all these limitations,” he replied. “Some of our agents seem to have been complicit in allocating and giving people land in places they are not supposed to stay. So, I don’t think I can sit here and say we have done enough – there is much more we can do.

“[Tacugama] is probably our most cherished and significant wildlife asset in the country.”

A national symbol for tourism

In 2019, the government designated the western chimpanzee as the national animal and national symbol for tourism. The image of a chimp is now etched in Sierra Leonean passports, a result of Tacugama’s advocacy Mr Amarasekaran and his team hope will entrench a love and respect for chimps that will curb the need for intervention.

“We wanted something more – that is how the national animal bill came through,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

“We thought if the agencies that are mandated to do all the law enforcement are not active and effective, then maybe we need to create a synergy between the people and the animals.”

Chimpanzees hunted for bushmeat

But chimpanzees are still being hunted as bushmeat for food across Sierra Leone and baby chimps are being torn from their families to be kept as illegal pets. Tacugama’s latest rescue is only eight months old.

Baby Asana is frail with thinning hair and is being nursed back to health by his chimp mum, Mama P, when we meet him. He was rescued after an informant sent a video of Asana wearing human clothes and being mistreated as an illegal pet in Bo, Sierra Leone’s second largest city.

“For me as the founder of the sanctuary, I feel defeated,” says Mr Amarasekaran with Asana being cared for behind him.

“These chimps shouldn’t be arriving here if we have done enough work outside – there shouldn’t be any killings, there shouldn’t be any rescues. That is the time when I can say that I achieved something.”

Research from the Jane Goodall Institute identified that between five and 10 chimpanzees die for every surviving rescued chimpanzee. And with the sanctuary closed, much-needed public advocacy work will take a hard hit.

‘Until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee’

“I’m really concerned because I only even started to experience chimpanzees when I started working here. I knew that we had chimps here. But until I came to the sanctuary, I didn’t see a chimpanzee,” says 25-year-old Tacugama communications officer, Sidikie Bayoh.

“Now, we are at a situation where we are closed indefinitely but what if this becomes something wherein we can never open the sanctuary again for people to visit? Then you will have all these young Sierra Leoneans never fully understanding what their national animal is.”

The closure also means there will be no revenue from visitors at a time when USAID funding has been halted.

“In the absence of funding from – at the moment – the US government, it is going to be difficult for us to turn around quickly,” says Mr Amarasekaran.

He then shrugs and smiles knowingly, adding: “We are very resilient – we are like chimpanzees. So, we will manage somehow.”

World

Israel allows foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza

Published

15 hours ago

July 25, 2025

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Israel allows foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza

Israel has said foreign countries can drop aid into Gaza from today.

A senior IDF official told Sky News on Friday: “Starting today, Israel will allow foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza.

“Starting this afternoon, the WCK organisation began reactivating its kitchens.”

Humanitarian aid organisation World Central Kitchen paused its operation in Gaza in November after a number of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike last year.

Aid workers in Gaza – who help provide food, medicine and shelter for the millions displaced there – have been affected by the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.

In recent weeks hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while waiting for food and aid.

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World

‘Almost like a game of target practice’: British surgeon says IDF shooting Gazans at aid points

Published

1 day ago

July 24, 2025

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'Almost like a game of target practice': British surgeon says IDF shooting Gazans at aid points

A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has told Sky News that there is “profound malnutrition” among the population – and claims IDF soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “like a game of target practice”.

Dr Nick Maynard spent four weeks working inside Nasser Hospital, where a lack of food has left medics struggling to treat children and toddlers.

The conditions inside the hospital, in the south of the Strip, have been documented in a Sky News report.

Dr Maynard told The World with Yalda Hakim: “I met several doctors who had cartons of formula feed in their luggage – and they were all confiscated by the Israeli border guards. Nothing else got confiscated, just the formula feed.

“There were four premature babies who died during the first two weeks when I was in Nasser Hospital – and there will be many, many more deaths until the Israelis allow proper food to get in there.”

In other developments:

• Israel and the US have recalled their teams from Gaza ceasefire talks

• US envoy Steve Witkoff has accused Hamas “of failing to act in good faith”

• France has announced that it will recognise the state of Palestine

• An influential group of MPs is calling on the UK to “immediately” do the same

‘They were shells’

Dr Nick Maynard has been going to Gaza for the past 15 years – and this is his third visit to the territory since the war began.

The British surgeon added that virtually all of the kids in the paediatric unit of Nasser Hospital are being fed with sugar water.

“They’ve got a small amount of formula feed for very small babies, but not enough,” he warned.

Dr Maynard said the lack of aid has also had a huge impact on his colleagues.

“I saw people I’d known for years and I didn’t recognise some of them,” he added. “Two colleagues had lost 20kg and 30kg respectively. They were shells, they’re all hungry.

“They’re going to work every day, then going home to their tents where they have no food.”

IDF ‘shooting Gazans at aid points’

Elsewhere in the interview, Dr Maynard claimed Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians at aid points “almost like a game of target practice”.

He has operated on boys as young as 11 who had been “shot at food distribution points” run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

“They had gone to get food for their starving families and they were shot,” he said.

“I operated on one 12-year-old boy who died on the operating table because his injuries were so severe.”

Dr Maynard continued: “What was even more distressing was the pattern of injuries that we saw, the clustering of injuries to particular body parts on certain days.

“One day they’d be coming in predominately with gunshot wounds to the head or the neck, another day to the abdomen.

“Twelve days ago, four young teenage boys came in, all of whom had been shot in the testicles and deliberately so.

“The clustering was far too obvious to be accidental, and it seemed to us like this was almost like a game of target practice.

“I would never have believed this possible unless I’d witnessed this with my own eyes.”

Sky News has contacted the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.

An IDF spokesperson previously told Sky News it “strongly rejected” the accusations that its forces were instructed to deliberately shoot at civilians.

“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incidents are “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities”.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been managing the supply of aid to Gaza since Israel lifted an 11-week blockade in May.

It has four aid distribution sites, all of which are located in Israeli military zones, with journalists prohibited from entering.

More than 1,000 people have been reported killed while trying to receive food aid since the GHF took over, according to the UN.

UNRWA, its relief agency for Gaza, has heavily criticised the scheme.

Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said: “The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill.”

Just a fraction of the aid trucks needed are making it into the enclave, the UN has said, while multiple aid groups and the World Health Organisation have warned Gazans are facing “mass starvation”.

Mr Lazzarini quoted a colleague on Thursday and said malnourished Palestinians in the Gaza “are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”.

World

Eleven civilians killed as Thailand and Cambodia exchange fire in escalating border dispute

Published

1 day ago

July 24, 2025

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Eleven civilians killed as Thailand and Cambodia exchange fire in escalating border dispute

Eleven Thai civilians and a soldier have been killed in clashes between Thailand and Cambodia, officials have said, as long-standing tensions in disputed border areas boiled over into open conflict.

Among those killed was an eight-year-old boy, the army said in a statement.

It said most casualties occurred in Si Sa Ket province, where six people were killed after shots were fired at a fuel station.

Another 14 people have been injured in three Thai border provinces.

Thailand’s health minister Somsak Thepsuthin confirmed the fatalities to reporters, adding Cambodia’s actions, including an attack on a hospital, should be considered war crimes.

Both countries accuse one another of starting the military clashes and have downgraded their diplomatic relations in the rapidly escalating dispute. Thailand has also sealed all land border crossings with Cambodia.

Early on Thursday, a Thai F-16 fighter jet bombed targets in Cambodia, according to Thailand’s army.

“We have used air power against military targets as planned,” Thai army deputy spokesperson Richa Suksuwanon said.

Cambodia’s defence ministry said Thai jets had dropped bombs on a road near the ancient Preah Vihear temple, saying it “strongly condemns the reckless and brutal military aggression of the Kingdom of Thailand against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Cambodia”.

What has caused Thailand-Cambodia border clashes?

‘Civilian areas targeted’

Clashes are ongoing in at least six areas along the border, the Thai defence ministry said.

Thailand’s foreign ministry said Cambodian troops fired “heavy artillery” on a Thai military base on Thursday morning and also targeted civilian areas, including a hospital.

“The Royal Thai Government is prepared to intensify our self-defence measures if Cambodia persists in its armed attack and violations upon Thailand’s sovereignty,” the ministry said in a statement.

A livestream video from Thailand’s side showed people, including children and the elderly, running from their homes and hiding in a concrete bunker as explosions sounded.

The clash happened in an area where the ancient Prasat Ta Muen Thom temple stands along the border between Thailand’s Surin province and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.

‘Conflict not spreading’

Thailand’s acting premier said fighting must first stop before peace talks can start.

Caretaker Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters there had been no declaration of war and conflict was not spreading into more provinces.

He said Cambodia had fired heavy weapons into Thailand without any specific targets, resulting in civilian deaths.

Earlier on Thursday, Cambodia downgraded diplomatic relations with Thailand to their lowest level, expelled the Thai ambassador and recalled all Cambodian staff from its embassy in Bangkok.

The day before, its neighbour withdrew its ambassador and expelled the top Cambodian diplomat in protest after five Thai soldiers were wounded in a land mine blast, one of whom lost part of a leg.

A week earlier, a land mine in a different contested area exploded and wounded three Thai soldiers, including one who lost a foot.

Relations between the southeast Asian neighbours have collapsed after a Cambodian soldier was killed in an armed confrontation in a disputed border area in May.

Nationalist passions on both sides have further inflamed the situation, and Thailand’s prime minister was suspended earlier this month as an investigation was opened into possible ethics violations over her handling of the border dispute.

Border disputes are longstanding issues that have caused periodic tensions between the countries. The most prominent and violent conflicts have been around the 1,000-year-old Preah Vihear temple.

In 1962, the International Court of Justice recognised Cambodian sovereignty over the temple area.