Early this year, scientists huddled to review camera trap footage from Gabon’s Batéké Plateau National Park, hoping to catch glimpses of leopards, servals, or African golden cats — wild cats Panthera and our partners are working to protect in the region. What they found instead came as a joyous surprise: an exceedingly rare video of a curious Endangered female chimpanzee using a stick to investigate a camera in a remote area of the park.
These primates are well known for their use of tools, especially to gather food, but the behavior is rarely caught on camera. Captured on January 27, 2025, by ANPN, Panthera and Gaboma Multimedia and Production, this video is the first-ever known footage and evidence of chimpanzees using tools from this region of Gabon.
“Camera trap footage of rare behaviors on species that might not have even been the target of a specific study are of completely underestimated importance, since they can be always the start of a more in-depth investigation,” said Tobias Deschner, PhD, a primatologist at Osnabrück University and an expert on chimpanzees in Gabon. “Furthermore, particularly for populations that are not habituated to human presence, camera trap footage represents one of the very few means to get a glimpse of their behavior.”
Camera trap footage has allowed for comparisons of chimpanzee behavior across Africa, Deschner said.
“From such analyses we know that, for example, not only the presence or absence of termite fishing is an indication of a cultural behavior in chimpanzees, but that even at sites where chimpanzees do fish for termites, they do so with different techniques, just in the same way in which humans have as well cultural differences in food acquisition and preparation,” Deschner said. “We were as well able to show that human disturbance has a damaging impact on behavioral diversity in chimpanzees, in other words at areas where they are heavily poached upon or their habitat destroyed, they lose significant parts of their culture.”
Decades of poaching have ravaged many species in Batéké — including chimpanzees — but thanks to conservation efforts over the last 20 years, wildlife is recovering.
Since 2017, Panthera and Gabon’s National Park Agency (ANPN) have collaborated to monitor wildlife, support anti-poaching patrols, improve infrastructure and promote alternative livelihoods to reduce illegal hunting in the park. The video is part of this partnership, along with efforts from Gaboma Multimedia and Production.
Coincidentally, the chimpanzee video is from the same region where a lone male lion was caught on a camera trap in 2015. Lions have been considered extinct in Gabon for over two decades, and the lion footage was the first time the species had been seen in the park in 20 years. This evidence spurred a historic project led by ANPN and Panthera to reintroduce the species. Slated for 2025, it will be the first lion restoration ever in West and Central Africa. Gaboma Multimedia and Production is producing a film about our efforts to restore lions to Batéké. Their capture of the 2025 chimpanzee is an exciting accident — and proof that that conservation work, while challenging, can pay off!
So far, these conservation efforts have aided the recovery of wild cats in the park like leopards, African golden cats, and servals and along with other species like chimpanzees, forest elephants, giant pangolins and various prey species.
Recent survey data showed a remarkable 99.5 % decrease in poacher capture rates and steep increases in photographic rates for larger wildlife between 2001-2003 and 2017-2018.
“During our 2001 Batéké lion survey, besides a single image of one small antelope in this vicinity, we only photographed poachers coming in from the Congo. To now see large carnivores and mammals in the same landscape is proof that we must never give up hope for even those species that appear to have been erased from the wild,” said Philipp Henschel, Panthera’s West and Central Africa Regional Director. “We are absolutely thrilled by the recovery of Gabon’s wildlife, demonstrated by the shouts and screams of excitement that echoed through camp when we viewed the latest chimpanzee video for the first time.”
When we protect wild cats, we help protect every other species who calls this unique mosaic of savannas and forest home.
Panthera and ANPN’s conservation efforts in Batéké Plateau National Park are currently supported by the Wildlife Conservation Network, Lion Recovery Fund, and Elephant Crisis Fund, who support conservation efforts through anti-poaching, community engagement and upliftment, as well as extensive wildlife monitoring in this landscape.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
