Congo Chimps at India’s Vantara: A Case of Capture From The Wild?
Aathira Perinchery
New Delhi/ Bengaluru: Nine chimpanzees that arrived at Vantara, or the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Park, in Gujarat’s Jamnagar from the Democratic Republic of the Congo this year were not captive-bred but caught from the wild, said a news report in Africa Geographic –an African safari website that also reports on news about wildlife from the continent – on April 10.
However, in response to a similar allegation in a report by a German daily in March this year that its ‘rescue’ efforts were possibly fuelling illegal wildlife trade, Vantara had told The Wire that the allegations were “entirely baseless” and “misleading”.
Incidentally, a report by The Wire on March 29 had shown that an international NGO that works to combat illegal wildlife trade had also highlighted “multiple red flags” in a consignment of endangered primates including one of nine chimpanzees from the Congo to a “private facility” in India.
The alert, however, did not say which private facility this was. It also noted that there are increasing instances where wildlife are being smuggled illegally under the guise of transfers between zoos and rehabilitation and rescue centres across the world.
Questionable chimp transfers
Chimpanzees are great apes, and the closest living relatives of humans. A species that is social and lives in small community groups, chimpanzees occur across parts of central Africa, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The IUCN Red List categorises the species as “Endangered”, due to a decreasing population of these animals in the wild.
Poaching is the biggest threat to these apes. Poachers kill adults for bushmeat, and baby chimpanzees – often still clinging to their dead mothers – are snatched up, alive, for the illegal wildlife trade and sold as pets: a bloody and traumatic affair.
So it’s no surprise that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, which bans trade in specific species to protect them, and permits regulated trade or transfers in rare cases) lists chimpanzees under Appendix I: a list that includes species that are among the most endangered in the world, and whose international trade is banned except under very rare circumstances such as scientific research. Many countries including India and the Congo are signatory to the CITES.
In many parts of Africa including the Congo where wildlife authorities confiscate live baby chimpanzees from poachers, they are often sent to the nearest rehabilitation centres where they are looked after and treated for their injuries and trauma. One such centre is the Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center in eastern Congo near the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, one of Congo’s largest national parks that spans across 6,000 sq km.
The Lwiro centre currently has 129 chimpanzees: it takes in and rehabilitates baby chimpanzees, often less than three years old, that are rescued by wildlife authorities after crack downs on poachers.
Also Read: NGO Flags Rise in Illegal Wildlife Trade Guised as ‘Zoo Transfers’, Including to India
A report in Africa Geographic (AG) on April 10 said that in January this year, staff at the Lwiro center refused to hand over 12 chimpanzees to the officials of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, ICCN, which monitors the country’s sanctuaries and zoos) who turned up at the rehabilitation center without prior notice, to take the animals to the Kinshasa Zoo.
And yet, the Kinshasa and Kisangani zoos witnessed nine chimpanzees arriving from “unexplained sources” in the recent months, the AG report said, quoting a press release issued by Ofir Drori, founder-director of the wildlife law enforcement NGO EAGLE on February 13 this year.
“Links from ICCN lead to a likely buyer of the chimps. There has been a major rise in primates and other wildlife shipping to India for the past 6 months, with a sole buyer: the so-called Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (GZRRC),” the AG quoted Drori’s post as saying.
The GZRRC or Vantara, founded by Anant Ambani, son of billionaire Mukesh Ambani who owns Reliance Industries Limited, has been importing animals in an effort to 'rescue' them. As of March 2024 (per its latest annual report), it is home to 10,360 animals of 345 species, including chimpanzees and blue and gold macaws.
However, the facility has come under fire from several quarters, with news reports noting how elephants across different parts of India including the northeast have been transferred to the GZRRC. As The Wire reported, there have also been concerns of exotic animals being smuggled across the Myanmar border and into northeastern states, with activists alleging that the confiscations of these animals were possibly orchestrated to make them legal so that they can be sent to rescue centers – such as the GZRRC – in the country.
According to the AG report, EAGLE’s press release was later removed from its website. And on the same day – February 13 – nine chimpanzees “were flown to India on a private jet”, the report said.
“Our sources later confirmed that the chimpanzees had arrived at Vantara,” the report quoted anonymous sources as saying.
According to its annual report, the facility acquired a total of 28 chimpanzees between March 2023 and March 2024, from the United Arab Emirates. Vantara’s latest annual report for 2024-25 is not yet available on the website of the Central Zoo Authority.
Poached from the wild?
The AG report quoted Drori as confirming that there are no captive breeding centers in Africa, let alone the Congo, raising the question of where the chimpanzees came from. The report, quoting ICCN documents it had accessed, also noted that eight chimpanzees that arrived at the Congolese zoos may have been collected from captivity in remote villages around 200 km north of Kisangani, and were then possibly sent to Kinshasa zoo.
“The young chimps found in captivity in villages were likely collateral damage to bushmeat hunting, and therefore, they were captured from the wild,” the AG report read.
The Wire has written to Vantara about the allegations presented in the AG report that the chimpanzees it may have imported could be wild-caught individuals. The story will be updated when they respond.
However, it should be noted that in response to a similar allegation in a report by German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on March 13 this year that its ‘rescue’ efforts were possibly fuelling illegal wildlife trade, Vantara had told The Wire that the allegations were “entirely baseless” and “misleading”.
Adding that it was taking legal action against the publication, Vantara told The Wire that all animals that are housed at its center are captive-bred and rescued from private collections or zoos and other rehabilitation centers, and that all of them have relevant documentation such as CITES permits as proof for this.
But CITES permits can be falsified, according to experts. The Wire reported on March 29 about what literature says about this: a 2017 study, for instance, points to the “laundering” of animals caught from the wild as ‘captive-bred’ as “an emerging trend in wildlife crime and the illegal pet trade”.
In the same report, The Wire had shown that an international wildlife NGO that works to combat illegal wildlife trade had noted, in internal alerts earlier that month, that a consignment of nine chimpanzees and other species were transferred to India from Congo with the ‘C’ code in the CITES permits (which shows that they are captive-bred). The alert too – like Drori from the NGO EAGLE – noted that there are no known captive breeding or commercial breeding facilities in the Congo for any of these species.
It quoted “confidential sources” as saying that these animals were poached from the wild. It added that the chimpanzees went to a “private facility” in India and not a zoo, but did not specify which one.
The same alert also noted that at least eight consignments of mountain gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos from the Congo to India since March 2024 may have contained “laundered and smuggled” individuals “hidden” amongst legally-traded ones. The alert noted that the permits provided by India for the primates’ imports may have been invalid because they were possibly amended several times, which means that the permits were “re-used” multiple times. Moreover, the boxes that the animals were shipped in were not compliant with International Air Transport Association guidelines, which renders their CITES permits invalid.
Another alert, issued by the same organisation, had also highlighted the concerning trend of increasing instances where wildlife are being smuggled illegally under the guise of transfers between zoos and rehabilitation and rescue centres across the world.
Incidentally, the illegal wildlife trade is one of the most lucrative illegal industries in the world: between 1997 and 2016 alone, this trade was worth a staggering USD 2.9-4.4 trillion.
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