The bonobo (Pan paniscus) is one of humanity's two closest living relatives, sharing roughly 98.7% of our DNA, and is found exclusively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, south of the Congo River. They inhabit the humid lowland rainforests and swamp forests of the Congo Basin, a range that the river itself has shaped over millennia by acting as a geographic barrier separating bonobo and common chimpanzee populations.
Within their forest habitat, bonobos play a meaningful role in seed dispersal, helping to maintain the structural diversity of some of the most biodiverse tropical forest on Earth. The IUCN Red List classifies them as Endangered, with population numbers declining due to habitat loss driven by logging and agricultural expansion, as well as hunting for bushmeat. Civil instability across much of their range has made sustained conservation fieldwork difficult, and the species has no wild population outside the DRC.
No projects have listed this species yet. If you run a project that protects the Bonobo, you can add it to Wildlife Connect.
