For Micheline Nzonzi, the work starts with touch: she cradles and feeds an orphaned baby bonobo at Lola ya Bonobo, a nursery run on the forested outskirts of Kinshasa, where the sanctuary says it cares for infants rescued from hunters or taken from local homes where they are sometimes raised for meat. The sanctuary described the infant as about 1 year old and in good condition, with bottle-feeding and frequent play with other babies, alongside the foster mother’s daily attention. Nzonzi has been fostering bonobos for 24 years and told the Associated Press that “Without me, without us, these bonobos cannot survive,” adding that “They survive thanks to human affection.”
Lola ya Bonobo presents the infant-nursery phase as a turning point in a longer rescue-to-release process. The sanctuary described bonobos as raising their young for four to five years, while also saying bonobos’ low reproductive cycle leaves them vulnerable when habitat is disturbed or when poaching removes individuals from the population. It also said the baby stage matters because captured infants are often used as leverage to lure adult bonobos that then get shot when they investigate the noise.
Arsène Madimba, an educator with the sanctuary, said the goal is not only to rescue animals but also to reduce the underlying demand that fuels the illegal trade. “The bonobos are in danger. We are educating people to not kill the bonobos,” Madimba said. He added that the sanctuary’s messaging is built around what people cannot do—“We can’t kill them, we can’t put them at home as pets, we can’t eat them”—and warned that “Because of poaching, we can find big trading of orphaned bonobos across the country.”
The sanctuary said Congo’s laws protect great apes, including bonobos, but that hunting and trafficking still occur to satisfy bushmeat demand beyond the Congo Basin, where rain forests are often described as Earth’s “second lung.” While the bushmeat trade ranges from rodents to antelopes, Lola ya Bonobo said a bonobo can fetch a higher price than other meat. Madimba’s comments tied that pressure directly to the sanctuary’s experience of receiving orphaned animals and to the need to keep communities from treating bonobos as a food source or as a domestic pet.
Primatologist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, who founded Uganda’s Conservation Through Public Health group, said attitudes in Congo are not the same as in neighboring Uganda, where apes are not hunted for meat. She said, “There is a cultural difference,” explaining that “In Congo, they believe that you can become as strong as (the primate eaten).” Lola ya Bonobo said it opened this sanctuary in 2002 under the sponsorship of Les Amis des Bonobos du Congo, and that it now has dozens of grown bonobos living at the site and 11 young bonobos, with the most recent arrivals earlier this year.
Lola ya Bonobo described its method as pairing each baby bonobo with a foster mother for years before transfer to bonobo groups that are open to visitors. The sanctuary said that on rare occasions an animal eventually returns to the wild, but that preparation can take years. It said the nursery’s caregivers can often recognize individual bonobos by name, and the sanctuary included an on-the-ground account of staff feeding babies from the treetops and across water as the animals make noise.
The Associated Press also reported that in Kinshasa, the primate-meat market has moved underground, with trading sometimes linked to health rules aimed at reducing zoonotic disease spread. Charles Ntanga, a vendor at Masina market, told the AP that he “used to sell monkeys” but that “now we cannot sell monkeys, any type of monkeys.” Another vendor, Guyva Mputu, was described as selling python, and the AP’s account characterized how traders operate even as permits for hunting certain species exist.
Beyond the nursery, the threat to bonobos remains the central conservation challenge. The sanctuary said about 20,000 bonobos are left in the wild, noting that primatologists estimated roughly 100,000 in the 1980s. It attributed the decline primarily to the commercial bushmeat trade, citing the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and described bonobos as inhabiting dense equatorial forest south of the Congo River.
As for longer-term strategies, Congo authorities last year broached a program that would issue “bonobo credits,” similar to carbon credits, to reward communities for preserving forests, Lola ya Bonobo said. The program, the sanctuary added, is yet to take off. In the sanctuary’s account, the immediate focus remains the infant nursery—because without sustained care for the youngest bonobos, rescued animals may not survive long enough to become candidates for future release.