Chimpanzee & Wildlife Orphan Care Project Detail
Chimpanzee & Wildlife Orphan Care Project
ABOUT THE CHIMPANZEE SANCTUARY
Although chimpanzee rehabilitation is the primary focus of the orphanage, other animals benefit from the care and attention received at the orphanage as well. Antelopes, baboons, monkeys, tortoises, squirrels, bush babies, dogs and birds have all been nursed back to health at the orphanage, including the biggest resident of all - Billy the hippo.
VOLUNTEER RESPONSIBILITIES
As a volunteer, you will be involved in the daily care-taking of the chimpanzees and other animals. You will interact with the young chimps at the orphanage, record the animals' behaviour for research purposes, and assist with feeding all the animals. You will also be involved in educating Zambian children on chimpanzees and the need to save this endangered spacies.
You will be involved in the following activities:
- Prepare chimpanzee and monkey/ baboon food for daily feedings
- Assist with feedings
- Interact with the young chimps at the orphanage (chimp walks once a week)
- Monitor activity from outside the enclosures and document movements and activities with video cameras
- Assist with feeding the other animals at the orphanage (including a hippo)
- Assist with the education programme
- Clean food buckets and boxes
- Walk fence line around enclosures to check for overhanging branches, grass, weeds that might stop the electrical fence from working
- Clean out plastic bottles used for the feeding of milk to chimpanzees
- Pick lemons for chimpanzees from trees
- Sweep and clean visitor areas
- Assist orphanage manager in other duties
GENERAL INFORMATION ON CHIMPANZEES
The chimpanzee is the animal kingdom's closest relative to humans. In fact, chimpanzees are more similar to man than they are other apes, and research indicates that chimpanzees are over 99 percent genetically identical to humans. Baby chimpanzees, for instance, mature at roughly the same rate as humans, often staying close to their mothers until the age of eight.
Sadly, only limited legislation exists in a few nations to protect them, and it is estimated that chimpanzees and Africa's two other great apes' gorillas and bonobos' could cease to exist in the wild within the next 30-50 years.
Hunted for meat or captured for sale to foreign zoos and animal testing labs, chimpanzees are disappearing at a rate of 6,000 per year. The illegal hunting and subsequent sale of primate meat, known as "bushmeat", is a thriving commercial enterprise and is on the increase with the depletion of forests. Sadly, it is believed that the killer human viruses such as Ebola and AIDS are directly related to the consumption of this ape meat, yet the practice shows no signs of abating.
Chimpanzee babies who survive the hunting ordeal are often sold as pets, zoo animals, or circus performers, while some wind up in medical research.
PRICES
2 weeks - GBP1095 l USD1970 l EUR1425
4 weeks - GBP1795 l USD3230 l EUR2335
6 weeks - GBP2695 l USD4845 l EUR3495
