Community-based conservation and chimpanzee research in Gishwati forest, Rwanda.

As great ape populations around the world continue to decline, largely due to anthropogenic activities, conservation programs aimed at supporting these efforts have had mixed success. Here, we evaluate our community-based conservation program in Gishwati forest, Rwanda, aimed at helping to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services using chimpanzees as a flagship species. We examine the effectiveness of this program on reducing one of the ongoing threats to Gishwati's population of chimpanzees, illegal cattle grazing as well as the program's influence on the size of the chimpanzee population.

Chimpanzee seed dispersal in a montane forest fragment in Rwanda.

Unlabelled: Primate seed dispersal plays an important role in forest regeneration. It may be particularly important to anthropogenically disturbed habitats such as forest fragments. However, few studies have examined primate seed dispersal in these types of environments.