FIGARO TOMORROW – For ten years, primatologist Amandine Renaud has been fighting to save the great apes and their natural habitat.
In a few days, Amandine Renaud will leave for Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo: two baby chimpanzees seized by Congolese eco-guards are waiting for her there. “The species is protected, but it remains the victim of poaching, explains this 40-year-old primatologist, who founded the P-WAC association in 2013 to protect primates, threatened by deforestation and hunting. The mother does not abandon her young, even in case of danger. Once she’s been shot, getting the babies back is easy.” The two survivors that this ex-banker is preparing to take in could have ended up in China as laboratory animals or luxury foods. Luckier than others, they will grow up in the rehabilitation center opened in 2017 by this animal lover, in the south-west of the DRC. They will find there six of their congeners and other small cercopithecus monkeys, also in danger. Objective: to reintroduce them to their natural environment when they grow up. Not for a few years…