Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing approximately 98.7% of human DNA, yet face extinction from deforestation, bushmeat hunting, and disease — with each individual capable of rich social and emotional experience.
Chimpanzees are among the animals whose capacity for suffering is most clearly analogous to human experience — they display grief over the loss of family members, fear and distress in response to threats, and acute pain from injury. Snared chimpanzees endure prolonged suffering before rescue or death, and orphaned infants experience profound psychological trauma from the loss of their mothers. The bushmeat trade creates a welfare catastrophe at both individual and population level: infants whose mothers are killed frequently die from stress and deprivation before reaching sanctuaries. Deforestation compounds these pressures by forcing chimpanzees into human-dominated landscapes where conflict, disease exposure, and hunting risk all increase. Sanctuaries provide essential welfare care for survivors but cannot substitute for protecting wild populations in intact forest.