Facilities

Activities and Construction

Veterinary Room

Thanks to a donation from EDEV, a Dutch NGO, brought by Femke den Haas while she was a volunteer at the CCC, we were able to build a much needed veterinary room, during the summer of 2001. It is a square building; built with cement blocks, 5x5 meters, with large screened windows on all sides.

New Kitchen

Thanks to a grant from International Primates Protection League, the CCC finally built a new kitchen with running water. All the chimpanzees’ food is now stored on shelves and in large containers. A big sink on one end, allows the keepers to clean the fruits and prepare it prior to going to the cages for the feeding. At the other end, a second shallower sink, is used for all the nursery and quarantine food preparation, including baby bottles preparation.

New Nursery

Mr. Garry Kukura, who worked for a mining company close to the East side of the Park,got in touch with the director concerning the two chimpanzees that he was caring for. He hadn’t bought them, but had them donated to him by the poachers since they were in bad physical health. He wanted to send his two chimps to South Africa to another sanctuary. The director explained the Guinean law and the CITES regulation regarding the transport outside of Guinea of endangered specie and he agreed to send his chimps to the CCC. Unfortunately, the CCC was full at the time and the CCC didn’t have a baby quarantine. Since Mr. Kukura was planning on leaving to go to Mali some months later, he agreed to build a nursery. He brought all the equipment that was needed and hired a welder. The cage was built in a record time and Shelley and Charlie, the two chimps in his care, moved in right away in August 2006. Three separate boxes that can hold 2 babies at a time were built inside. Hammocks hang from the ceiling of each box and the babies look pretty cozy when they are in them… In the main part of the cage, toys and vines are hanging from the roof. The babies only spend a couple of hours in the nursery during the day, since they are taken out in the forest every morning from 8am to 12 and in the afternoon from 3 to 6pm.

New Equipment

Microscope donated: Bet Margolin, the Division of Natural Sciences, at ORANIM Academic College, the largest teacher education institution in Israel, has donated a microscope to the Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC). The CCC and its legal entity, Project Primates, Inc., care for and rehabilitate orphaned chimpanzees but also work to educate the public about preservation and protection of wild chimpanzees. Oranim Academic College strives to educate future Natural Science teachers to understand and respect the natural world around them, and has wished the CCC much success in its important work. Mr. Eyal Ofer, Veterinary Surgeon from Israel volunteering at the CCC, conveyed the microscope together with best wishes. CCC wishes to express their appreciation and thanks to Shula Nachmias, Head of Bet Margolin, The division of Natural Sciences, together with Professor Yair Caro, Head of Oranim Academic College, for their generosity.

Once again, the 1996 Mitsubishi Pajero has been the cause of a lot of trouble. In 2004, we had to rebuild the whole motor. The expenses were worth it, as without a second car, all education and site search activities had to be stopped. The 2002 pickup is also showing signs of age.

Camp

Since 1999, when Ms. Raballand became director of the CCC, the management team has been living at the Parc du Haut Niger camp in Somoria, occupying two bedrooms and the community room/kitchen. Due to lack of space and increased tension with the Parc management concerning visitors and students living in Somoria, a separate camp was built in February. This new camp includes two huts, used as bedrooms for Dr. Colin and Ms. Raballand, a large community room/kitchen as well as a latrine hut and a shower hut. Water pipes to the kitchen and shower were installed in September and we officially moved into the community room in November. This camp is built with local materials, mud bricks and thatched roofs with cement floors. The new camp is located halfway between the Parc camp and the chimpanzees, 100 meters from the keepers' camp. The volunteers still use the two bedrooms allocated to the CCC at the Parc camp, but are not using the Parc community room anymore.

A new bedroom at camp has been built for the volunteer veterinarian. We hired local villagers who used only local materials to build it. Thatch roofs were also redone for all of the huts in the camp.

A new office, a square hut this time, was built in 2005 next to the Director's bedroom. All the office files and desktop, as well as the accounting files, were stored in the director's bedroom for many years. Having a separate office, will allow the manager and volunteers, in charge, easier access to the files.

Estelle's Shed	Chris's Shed and Car
Food and Storage Room	Inside the Kitchen, February 2003
Community Room	New Square Office

Fencing

New Quarantine Cage:
Since the beginning of the CCC, the quarantine babies have been sleeping in a mud brick hut built in the first year the project started. Awele and Rocky had been the first users of that old hut so a new facility was more than necessary. The quarantine cage is approximately two meters high and five by five meters. It was completed in August 2004 and the babies have been enjoying their cage since the beginning of September, when we finished painting the bars. They're still not used to staying in the fence when they are alone since they're not used to being left without a human, but we're habituating them slowly. They are still going out every morning and afternoon in the forest with a volunteer and a keeper, but we always spend a minimum of an hour a day in the fence with them... Both the volunteer and keeper are necessary on the morning and afternoon walks, since there are currently 9 babies in quarantine...a full house!

Youngster's Group:
A new fence for the youngsters has been built. Its length is about 600 meters of fence line and it connects to the cage by a high tunnel. It took four months to build it and the chimpanzees were allowed in their new fence at the beginning of October 2004. That first time, they almost all escaped when a branch fell on the fence. They all climbed onto this tree and the branch next to it, but we had no problem catching them back. Once the fence was repaired, Rocky and Kyo went out that same week using a fig tree that wasn't protected - but since then, that tree has been protected, and nobody else has escaped. They are still going out on walks in the forest every morning, for at least three hours.

Additional Fencing:
Funds left from the USAID grant funded an electrical fence extension to be built for Amadeus and Coco's cage. It was based on the design of the youngsters' fence and was built by Felix Mara, our fence manager. Their fence was only 150 meters long before the extension. The addition is almost 400 meters long. Coco and Amadeus haven't been able to use it yet since Keno, a seven year old male coming from Conakry, was quarantine in the other half of Coco and Amadeus cage. He is the one using the additional fence. Both fences are adjacent to each other and the cage with a sliding door opening from each cage to one fence.

In addition, essential construction has been completed at the release site, 29 kilometers from the CCC holding facilities. An electrical fence was built; measuring about 400 meters long x 3 meters high. Adjacent to that fence, a cage was built at the site that will serve as a temporary holding facility when the chimps get transferred to the site, or if they need to be separated for veterinary reasons. The cage is measures 8 x 8 x 2 meters.

Electrical Fence:
A visit from Mike Pugh from the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) in March 1999 spearheaded the in-kind donation of an electrical fence enclosure from WSPA for the CCC's chimpanzees. A container with all the necessary materials arrived in Conakry in December 2000 from Kenya. Also part of the donation, a team of builders from Kenya arrived in Guinea in February 2001. The construction of the one-kilometer of fence line lasted almost three months. Apart from the three Kenyan specialists, lots of local Guineans were hired, especially for the clearing of the fence line. The original cages had to be transformed to be able to open into the fence enclosure. It was a lot of work and logistically challenging, but the joy of the chimpanzees when we opened their sliding doors into the fence enclosure was the greatest reward for all of us. A couple of improvements were made afterwards such as the addition of some earth lines, tensenors, and over hangers to prevent any escapes. The Kenyan team trained two local Guineans. One of them is still working with us as fence manager.

Diagram of fencing and cages at CCC