Over the past 20 years, the population of western chimpanzees has plummeted by more than 80 percent. Right now, one of the few remaining protected habitats exists inside the Moyen-Bafing National Park in Guinea, West Africa, and protecting it is absolutely imperative. In spite of that, a corporation called the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS) is planning to build a dam that would devastate this crucial habitat. The Koukoutamba dam would regularly flood a huge area of the park — twice the size of San Francisco — which would, in turn, spell these chimps’ destruction.
The construction of the Koukoutamba dam in Guinea, West Africa, will also have immense costs for the environment and for people living alongside the Bafing River. These communities depend on the river for their livelihoods and access to water, and the dam will severely disrupt their social, behavioral, cultural, economic, and political lives. On top of that, it’s time for humans everywhere to stop abusing Mother Earth and start respecting the environment, but this construction and development would do exactly the opposite. We cannot let this greedy project decimate the already fragile chimpanzee community and that of their human neighbors! Sign the petition demanding an end to the deadly Koukoutamba dam project!