Protected Areas, Humans and Chimpanzees. A Fluctuating Edge in Time and Space

Biodiversity conservation raises many questions about how humans organize themselves and coexist with nature. Our previous research focused on natural and anthropogenic factors influencing chimpanzees' distribution in a protected tropical forest (National Park) whilst surrounded by a high-density human population. This work seeks to understand how these human and non-human actions have fluctuated over time and space, through the study of changes and developments in vegetation cover at the forest edge (vegetation plots, aerial photographs and satellite images), and surveys with both villagers (semi-quantitative interviews, participative observations) and tea workers (questionnaires) living outside the forest. Despite the legal and physical discontinuities, the areas of each active factor (i. e. vegetation, chimpanzees, humans) overlap. Contact with nature is maintained in the imagination, in the culture and in certain practices of the villagers.