Paper short abstract:

How do we grapple with conservation aims in a place that is losing its ability to sustain both chimpanzee and human life? In the forest-savanna mosaic of central Sierra Leone, elephant grass desertification is troubling the foundation of "place" as forests and farms are consumed by invasive grass.

Paper long abstract:

The Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project in central Sierra Leone aims to promote chimpanzee conservation outside of protected areas, as most chimpanzee communities dwell in forest fragments in close proximity to villages, instead of in formally protected areas. In addition to mediating often tense and occasionally destructive relationships between chimpanzees and humans in a dynamic scape of forests, fallow bush, farms, swamps, and villages, the project contends with the problem of elephant grass desertification. This invasive grass first appeared with the colonial railroad after the second world war, and because of its hardiness and ability to spread is now replacing both farmbush and forest fragments that people and chimpanzees need to sustain themselves. As productive, known places are inexorably altered by the grass, we face the problem of 'de-placement', where places become unknowable to both humans and chimpanzees. With chimpanzees attempting to adapt through previously unseen practices such as nesting in solitary palms and building new nests on old in productive feeding areas, people face an inability to work and innovate out of the problem, with known farming practices exacerbating the advance of the grass.