Assessing conservation attitudes and behaviors of Congolese children neighboring the world's first bonobo (Pan paniscus) release site.

Poaching and habitat destruction in the Congo Basin threaten African great apes including the bonobo (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and gorillas (Gorilla spp.) with extinction. One way to combat extinction is to reintroduce rescued and rehabilitated apes and repopulate native habitats. Reintroduction programs are only successful if they are supported by local populations. Ekolo ya Bonobo, located in Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is the world's only reintroduction site for rehabilitated bonobos. Here we assess whether children, of the Ilonga-Pôo, living adjacent to Ekolo ya Bonobo demonstrate more pro-ape conservation attitudes than children living in, Kinshasa, the capital city. We examined children's attitudes toward great apes because children are typically the focus of conservation education programs. We used the Great Ape Attitude Questionnaire to test the Contact Hypothesis, which posits that proximity to great ape habitat influences pro-conservation attitudes toward great apes. Ilonga-Pôo children who live in closer contact with wild bonobos felt greater responsibility to protect great apes compared to those in Kinshasa who live outside the natural habitat of great apes. These results suggest that among participants in the DRC, spatial proximity to a species fosters a greater sense of responsibility to protect and conserve. These results have implications for the successful implementation of great ape reintroduction programs in the Congo Basin. The data analyzed in this study were collected in 2010 and therefore provide a baseline for longitudinal study of this reintroduction site.

Implicit Measures Help Demonstrate the Value of Conservation Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Biodiversity is being lost at unprecedented rates. Limited conservation resources must be prioritized strategically to maximize impact. Here we introduce novel methods to assess a small-scale conservation education program in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lola ya Bonobo is the world's only sanctuary for one of humans' two closest living relatives, bonobos, orphaned by the illegal trade in bushmeat and exotic pets. The sanctuary is situated on the edge of the country's capital, Kinshasa, its most densely populated region and a hub for the illegal wildlife trade that is imperiling bonobos and other endangered species. Lola ya Bonobo implements an education program specifically designed to combat this trade. Previous evaluation demonstrated the program's efficacy in transmitting conservation knowledge to children. In Study 1, we use novel implicit tests to measure conservation attitudes before and after an educational visit and document a significant increase in children's pro-conservation attitudes following direct exposure to bonobos and the education program. In Study 2, we show that adults exhibit high levels of conservation knowledge even before visiting the sanctuary, likely due to the sanctuary's longstanding education efforts in Kinshasa. In Study 3, we explored adults' empathetic attitudes toward bonobos before and after the sanctuary tour. Our results support the conservation education hypothesis that conservation education has improved relevant knowledge and attitudes in Kinshasa. Crucially, the present study validates new methods for implicitly assessing attitudes about environmental and social issues. These methods overcome typical biases in survey sampling and can be employed in diverse populations, including those with low literacy rates.