Chimp Rehabilation Centre Gambia

The Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Project began life in 1969 as an informal orphanage for chimpanzees rescued from traffickers. It became a formal rehabilitation project in 1979. Today, around 100 chimps, descended from and joined by decades of rescued orphans, now live wild across three of the River Gambia National Park's five islands in four separate groups, viewable only from a boat circling the shoreline. No one is allowed to set foot on the project's islands.

The project's own camp, overlooking the islands from the riverbank, has just four rooms, stilted and tented, reached by a steep climb through the trees. It only opens at weekends, with an official boat tour that reaches channels closed to day-trip operators from nearby Kuntaur. Along the way there's a good chance of hippos, crocodiles, red colobus and green vervet monkeys, and over 200 recorded bird species. Beyond the islands, the project has drilled boreholes and built gardens in thirteen neighbouring villages, easing the pressure on land and water.