Founded in 1979, the Tai Chimpanzee Project is running this year since 45 continuous years. This is another big milestone for TCP. We are grateful to so many Ivorian field assistants, some of them work with us for 30 years, and international research assistants, who have taken on the duty to follow the chimpanzees day after day after day, observing their behavior, collecting feces and urine, marking what they are eating and where they are going AND protecting them from poachers. We also thank so many PhD students and post-docs that have collected data over the last 45 years that make the long-term data base of TCP a unique research tool.
And we want to thank all the funders that have been investing in the research and the protection of this unique population of chimpanzees, with the Swiss National Foundation providing core funding for the research site from 1979 to 1996 and the German Max Planck Foundation providing care funding since 1997.
Stay tune for the celebrations happening in 2024 to celebrate 45 years of Tai Chimpanzee Project.