Establishment of Taï National Park

Taï National Park is a protected area in southwestern Côte d'Ivoire, near the border with Liberia, and holds one of the largest remaining blocks of primary tropical rainforest in West Africa. It shelters a rich fauna that includes western chimpanzees, pygmy hippopotamuses, forest elephants and several monkey species, many of them endangered or found in few other places. The park is well known to science for long-term studies of wild chimpanzees, which have documented tool use such as cracking nuts with stones. UNESCO recognized it as a Biosphere Reserve in 1978 and as a World Heritage Site in 1982. Poaching, farming and logging around its edges have remained persistent threats to its wildlife and forests.

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