Local Perceptions on Conservation of Wild Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus ) 3 in the Réserve Naturelle Communautaire de Dindéfélo , Southeast of Senegal

The objective is to study the local perceptions on the conservation of wild chimpanzees 21 (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Réserve Naturelle Communautaire de Dindéfélo 22 (RNCD), southeast of Senegal, to design specific actions to improve conservation 23 management. We conducted 338 semi-structured interviews in three main villages of 24 RNCD. Three-fourths of the population were farmers. Of those interviewed, 29% 25 received elementary education. Two of the three villages participated in a project to 26 plant trees as fences. On average, 66% of the respondents were animists. Of the 27 respondents who were afraid to see a chimpanzee, 68% answered because they 28 attack. Seventy-seven percent washed their clothes in the forest river because there 29 was more water than in the village wells. Of the interviewees who threw the old clothes 30 into the forest, 50% did it due to tradition. Ninety-six percent of respondents stated that 31 chimpanzees do not feed from their crops. The main problems of the locals with the 32 Reserve were lack of water and basic resources and not been allow to cut trees in 33 protected areas. There were significant relationships between education (1 34 Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 29 December 2017 doi:10.20944/preprints201712.0198.v1

important role in effective management of the biodiversity [6,13,14,15,16,17].Human activities are one of the main causes of extinction of the primates on our planet because of population growth, increase market demands, agricultural expansion, logging, mining, fossil fuel extraction, hunting, climate change, illegal trades, among others.There is an increase in human-chimpanzee conflicts.The ethnoprimatological fieldwork is an effective tool to identify specific problems and workable in situ solutions for primate conservation [2,[18][19][20][21].A biosocial approach to understanding the interactions between humans and wildlife implies an openness and flexibility that provides more effective results for a sustainable co-existence [22].
Ethnoprimatology is a powerful tool and a new approach to primate studies in the Anthropocene because there is a global and fast challenge that causes primates and humans to co-exist and interact.Humans influence primates and vice versa, for example, human-primates interface such as expansion of agriculture and crop foraging, pathogen transmission or new tourism, among others [23,19].This interface is global, from the Neotropics, Africa and Asia [2].In Uganda, researchers [24,15,9,17] have studied interactions between chimpanzees and local people concerning crop foraging and, thanks to local perceptions, they were able to design specific programs to mitigate conflicts.In Guinea-Bissau, studies have been carried out on the interaction of human chimpanzees in crops from an anthropogenic and ecological perspective to manage the attacks on people and the loss of habitat [11,18,20].
Several research papers in ethnoprimatology study relationships among variables such as gender, age, education and economic level, among others, with the perception about conservation [11,25].Gadd, in 2005, studied local attitudes towards elephant conservation in Kenya and took into account the education and wealth of the local people.Estrada took into account multiple factors in the extinction of species such as population increase, high levels of poverty and inequality, global market, literacy or education, among others [2].In the Réserve Naturelle Communautaire de Dindéfélo (RNCD), children often have to help the family at home with housework and labor, such as farming fields, so that they often do not go to school.
The RNCD area is one of the poorest and various NGOs assist in health, education and environment, among others.Trees for the future is a project to revitalize lands damaged by deforestation.They provide tree seed to farmers, technical training and on-site planning assistance.Over 115 million trees have been planted in dozens of countries of the world and hundreds of thousands of acres of soil revitalized while changing people's lives.In the RNCD, the project has been working a few years in the village of Segou, Nandoumary was newly incorporated into the project, and Dindéfélo was not participating in the project yet.Locals learn to plant trees to use as fences for their homes and crops.
In Senegal, traditional beliefs prevailed until the Muslim religion arrived.Now they live together although animism is hidden more.This coincides with other research in other countries such as Guinea-Bissau, where they studied local perceptions about the conservation of chimpanzees in Muslims and non-Muslims, if they considered that animals and forests are forever or if they could be extinguished and what they thought about the chimpanzees, whether they are good or bad [26,11,6].In Senegal, the Peul/Fulbe/Fula/Fulani ethnic group tells stories, for example, like a long time ago a mother was with her baby in the forest when a chimpanzee with her baby approached.
The chimpanzee came and took the baby from the woman.The mother chimpanzee killed the human baby, gave it back to the woman, and left.Another story told among the Peul is that if you walk through the forest and you find a chimpanzee with a gesture of attack, when you come home someone in your family will have died.They are death beliefs related to chimpanzees that coincide with other countries and affect conservation.When NGOs explain their programs to help chimpanzees, many locals do not understand it for this reason [20].
The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is an endangered species, according to the IUCN Red List in 2008.This species has suffered a significant reduction in population over the last 20-30 years due to loss of habitat, human population growth, diseases like ebola or political instability in some regions.The current trend of this species is declining.The latest estimation of the total population size of the Pan troglodytes verus is 21 300 to 55 600 in West Africa.In Senegal, this species is close to extinction.P. t. verus is one of the most endangered subspecies [27].Butynski, in 2001, estimated a population of 200-400 chimpanzees in Senegal.In a census conducted in the RNCD, it has estimated 36-91 chimpanzees in 2014 [39].
In the RNCD, as well as in other countries, there is great human presence in the forest and numerous encounters between humans and wildlife [28,18,9,10].Many people are inside or within the limits of the Reserve.It is one of the poorest regions of Senegal, which means that people use forest resources such as water and trees to survive [10,[29][30][31][32].The river water is used for drinking, washing clothes and bathing.
The forest is used as the town dump and latrine.Additionally, trees are cut down for building houses.Also, every year large areas of forests are burnt to open new fields for crops, as in other research areas [28,18,33,34].
These resources are essential for the survival of chimpanzees.In the dry season, with high temperatures and water shortages, an increased number of encounters between humans and chimpanzees in small gallery forests are reported [28,10].Previous studies in the Reserve show that the local population in 6 of the 10 villages seems to have constant conflicts with chimpanzees at water points [10].
Besides, the fruits of March-April are only found in gallery forests.Chimpanzees are forced to be in close proximity to humans, less than 30 meters.This is compounded by a great increase in uncontrolled tourism to cool off in Dindéfélo waterfall.In May, for instance, 300 tourists arrived in 30 minutes (personal observation).Another example of natural resources competition is that, in June, the diet of chimpanzees is basically the fruit of lare (Saba senegalensis).However, the local population collects tons illegally to trade in local and national markets [35,18,10,[36][37][38].In 2014, only 25 tons of S. senegalensis were collected legally [39].Throughout the year, trees are cut down; this presents the chimpanzees with a problem because they build their nests in these trees.
By burning forests, chimpanzees lose their food, resting areas and, finally, their habitat [29].
The RNCD would be an example of the problem of conservation of chimpanzees.In this area, the Peul ethnicity dominates [10,32].This ethnic group has changed from nomadism to a sedentary state.Many people are unaware of the official laws and are governed by local tradition.Islam co-exists with animism, in the original Peul religion, which is still present.The total population has increased in the last five years to a total of 1 236 inhabitants.The extended family is an economic model of subsistence.The local economy hardly exceeds the limit of subsistence and is based on agriculture, logging and livestock [29,39].
The objective of the research is to study the local perceptions to draw lines of action to improve the management of chimpanzee conservation in RNCD.It is therefore interesting to investigate whether there is competition for natural resources and delve deeper into the psychological thought-process to understand the motivation of the population variables.The main goals are to investigate whether the local population perceives natural resources as a competition with chimpanzees and to design specific lines of action to improve conservation management and sustainable coexistence in this complex period of the Anthropocene.

Study area
The RNCD (12º24'N, 12º18'W) covers an area of 14 050 ha.It is located in the region of Kedougou, in the extreme southeast of Senegal.The RNCD borders Guinea-Conakry to the south, the Gambia River to the east and, to the north with small towns and farmland [10,40].It is The Sudan savannah and The Guinean forest that make up a mosaic of patches of forests, crops and pastures.The Sudan savannah consists of grasslands with patches of trees interspersed with lateritic soils.The Guinean forest is made up of semi-deciduous forests, canyons and drainage galleries [10,32].This savannah-forest mosaic is the result of human activities such as logging and fires.The population depends on forest resources.On the Reserve, 10 villages with 6 951 inhabitants and 651 houses are distributed [10].The total population has been increasing in recent years.Due to a subsistence economy, locals open crops in poor soils every year, extract fruits to sell them and their cattle feed in the forests.
Faced with water scarcity, the inhabitants of the protected area flock to the rivers of the forests.

Interviews
We conducted 338 semi-structured interviews in three of the 10 villages of RNCD because they were the sites of research of the Instituto Jane Goodall España (IJGE).The three villages had different storage characteristics.Dindéfélo is a tourist small town in Senegal, and its population lives close to the forest.Segou is characterized by how its local people cooperate with conservation, and Nandoumary is noted for its deforestation and lack of resources.Forests of Segou and Dindéfélo are in the limits of the Reserve, and Nandoumary is inside the protected area.
Before anything else, permission from the heads of every village and the authorities was asked by means of the presentation of the research and following the social and cultural protocols of their ethnicity.Interviews were conducted with the help of several local interpreters, French to Pular (local language), in each village.Before the interviews, the interpreters were trained on how to do surveys.A preliminary study was performed to investigate the traditional beliefs with the help of locals.Some of the information obtained in the interviews was by living with local people two years and the reliable help of local people.
The houses where the interviews were conducted were chosen randomly.In each house the husband, the wife, the grandparents and the teenage son of a family were interviewed to study possible generational differences.The age of 15 years old was chosen because it is when youngsters begin to marry.
Before the interview, an informed consent from the volunteer was requested.
Surveys were performed individually to maintain everyone´s confidentiality.In a socioeconomic study by the IJGE in 2014, in the group surveys men generally answered and women were silent, so an individual interview was chosen to enhance the participation of women.
Information was asked regarding how locals perceived chimpanzees, the three variables of Ellis (feelings, thoughts and behaviors) [12] when they saw a chimpanzee, possible competition for water from the river, if there was problem of deforestation, whether chimpanzees fed their crops, among others (Table 2).The answers were 3 options (yes, no, unsure) except of the last question, which was open for them to explain problems and possible solutions.The average duration was 30 minutes per interview.The interviews were conducted from March to November 2015.Also comments on the respondent´s attitude and nonverbal behavior were written down.Likewise, information has also been taken into account outside the interviews, such as co-existence with local people, conflicts, meetings, events, local workers´ opinions of IJGE and observations of land-use and human-chimpanzee interactions.

Statistical analysis
Percentages of the characteristics of the local population and interview answers about the conservation of chimpanzees were calculated.Chi-squared tests were used to investigate whether there was an association between some characteristics of the local population and the most representative questions of chimpanzee conservation.
Due to the large amount of data, the most representative questions were selected to calculate the associations between the local perception on conservation of chimpanzees with education, Trees for the Future project and animism.Statistical analysis were performed with SAS.The significance level considered was p <0.05.

Characteristics of the local population
Ten percent of the local population was interviewed in each village (Dindéfélo = 209; Segou = 101; Nandoumary = 28).Fifty-three percent of those interviewed were women and 47% were men.Forty-seven percent of respondents were under 30 years old, 34% between 31 and 45, 12% between 46 and 60 and 7% were older than 60.The average number of women per husband was one.The average number of children per family was four.Also three-fourths of the population were farmers.On average, 66% of the respondents were animists (Table 1).
Of those interviewed, 29% received elementary education.Elementary education varied significantly depending on the gender of the respondents, the village and the age.Sixty-seven percent of the men and 33% of the women have gone to school ( 2 = 22.81, P <0.0001).In Dindéfélo, 25% of the respondents have not received elementary education, whereas in Segou the percentage was 70%, and in Nandoumary 75% ( 2 = 49.73,P <0.0001).Furthermore, 56% of the population between 46 and 60 years old have not gone to school, as opposed to 29% aged between 15-30 who have gone to elementary school ( 2 = 44.24,P <0.0001).

Depending on the village, the percentage of respondents who participated in
Trees for the Future project varied ( 2 = 158.66,P <0.0001).Forty-five percent of the respondents from Segou participated in the formation, whereas 18% of the respondents from Nandoumary, and 0% of the one of Dindéfélo, did this formation.

Questions about chimpanzee conservation
The results indicate differentiated responses in the questions on the conservation of chimpanzees (Table 2).Fifty percent threw old clothes in the forest by tradition, as they had always done so.Of this percentage, 20% regarded the forest as the town dump, 6% did not want to throw old clothes away at home because their cows ate it and died, 4% put the old clothes on the branches of trees to not burn and 3% did it because the marabou said to (priest in animism).
With respect to the trees, 96% of respondents said that chimpanzees do not feed their fields of crops, but rather baboons did (Papio papio), so local people shot them.Seventy-one percent of respondents, when they looked for fruits of the forest and did not find them, did not blame chimpanzees but did blame the baboons.Ninety percent of respondents would like to keep their livestock inside a fence all year, but they needed food and water and local people could not afford this.
The main problems of the locals with the Reserve are: 1) lack of water (35%); 2) lack of basic resources such as food, health, education, work and electricity (17%), and 3) logging, not being allowed to cut trees in protected areas (15%).Thirty-two percent answered that there was no problem.In interviews, Peul people were shy, willing and trying to avoid conflicts.If the question is formulated as "is there any problem?",most respondents answered "no".But, if asked "what can the Reserve do to help the local people?",most respondents listed various problems.
As a possible solution to the lack of water, they requested deep wells and washouses (30%).Second, 15% appealed requested basic resources such as food, medicine, school supplies, work and mills to transform the fruits.Finally, they suggested education as another solution (19%).
In addition, 45% said they did not know the solutions and that others had to solve the problems.However, 87% of respondents had a positive attitude, collaborative, and were supporters of chimpanzee conservation.

Associations between characteristics of the local population and chimpanzee conservation.
The results presented in Tables 3, 4 and 5 show the relationships existing between education, the Trees for the Future project and animist beliefs with the most representative questions of chimpanzee conservation questions.
Table 3 shows associations between education and some questions of chimpanzee conservation, with one significant relationship between education and some chimpanzee conservation questions (Table 3).Table 4 presents associations between the Trees for the Future project and some questions of chimpanzee conservation.These results show four significant relationships between the project and the local perception of the conservation of chimpanzees.Finally, Table 5 shows associations between Animism and some questions of chimpanzee conservation.Eleven significant associations between animism and items related to the conservation of primates were found.

Characteristics of the local population
The characteristics of the studied population coincide with those of other studies of local perceptions on chimpanzee conservation in other African countries.They are local groups with low life expectancies, subsistence economies, high population growth rates, low participation in basic education, and traditional beliefs with implications for biodiversity conservation.Gambia, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso are countries that stand out because chimpanzees are already extinct there and, as a result, may be examples that provide clues to prevent the same thing from happening in other countries like Senegal and Ghana, where there are very few chimpanzees left.These countries share high human population densities [29].There is an estimated world population increase from 7 billion in 2012 to 9 billion in 2050, where the highest growth is in tropical nations.Today, 2 billion people live in regions where primate species live, and are characterized by high levels of poverty.This growth increases the demand of the markets, which affects crops, wood, minerals and oil that come from zones of primates.This increases deforestation and habitat fragmentation and, thus, the decline of the primate population.In turn, poverty in these regions increases.It is the current conservation challenge [41].
Senegal is among the poorest countries in the world, as are also Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso.In Burkina, around 90% of the population depends on subsistence agriculture.In Senegal, the economy is mainly based on agriculture (especially peanuts), fishing and tourism.Most of these countries live below the poverty level, where less than 40% of the population has access to health service, potable water and sanitation [29].Senegal also shares with other African countries the performance of several international NGOs with cooperation projects, which help people in health care, education and the environment, among others.
These African countries have many ethnic groups with different cultures and traditional beliefs, such as animism in the RNCD of the Peul ethnic group, like the Nalu and Balanta in Guinea-Bissau [26,11], 60 ethnic groups in The Ivory Coast [29] or the Malika people in Mali [35].[9,17] and Guinea Bissau [6,42,20].In the RNCD, just as in Uganda, the locals see more chimpanzees currently, which could be a sign of habitat fragmentation [9].In several investigations it has been found that locals were supporters of chimpanzee conservation as long as they lived in the woods and the population could benefit from them, i.e., crop protection against other animals, work, projects or ecotourism.On the contrary, if chimpanzees entered their towns, competed for natural resources (fruits, crops, water, etc.), attacked humans, or were a source of food or money for illegal trafficking, local perception would change and locals would kill them [6,9,42,43].In Dindéfélo, some respondents commented that if the chimpanzees entered the village, there would be a problem.
Water is a resource which humans and wildlife compete for in southeastern Senegal and northern Guinea [28,29].In the RNCD, there were conflicts between humans and chimpanzees for water [10] because they struggled to obtain it at the same time and in the same place, especially during the dry season, which caused stress to both parties.In the RNCD, locals used the river as their washing place because there was plenty of water and they found it easier to wash themselves there.
Also, they did not use deep wells because they had to wait for their turn and the water was hard to extract.This meant that, in addition to using the river as a toilet and shower, they left the soap plastic containers in the forest as well as their worn clothing.
As a result of this, a possible source of contamination and zoonosis would be created.
Cows and baboons were also observed eating the abandoned clothes and, afterwards, found their dead bodies with clothes inside (personal observations).Aside from this, the problem of garbage in the Reserve has not been completely solved through an American project with wastebaskets.The garbage of wastebaskets was later burnt.
Local people did not want their clothes to be burnt.They had the animistic belief that if the clothes were burnt, this could make many people from the community become ill.Most locals remembered the existence of more trees 30 years ago, as also happens in Uganda.However, others thought that there were not any problems of deforestation, which coincides with local opinions in Uganda and Guinea-Bissau about the fact that the forest will last forever (77%), or that the forest will not run out of resources (38%) [26,30,9,43].This was the reason why locals complained about bans in the Reserve against cutting and burning down trees.In addition, they claim that they are poor and need forest resources to live on.
It is worth noting that in the RNCD chimpanzees did not feed crops, which contrasts with the vast majority of research in other countries, such as Uganda [9] and Guinea-Bissau [44,6,45,8].The expansion of agriculture is one of the main causes of deforestation and the extinction of species such as chimpanzees [29] as in Mali [35], Guinea-Bissau [6,8], Gambia, Republic of Guinea, Sierra Leone, The Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria [29].So, this matter would require further studies to investigate the variables that influence the situation of the RNCD for chimpanzees who live in human-dominated landscapes but do not feed from the fields, to help with this problem in other countries.
As in Guinea-Bissau and Uganda, baboons in the RNCD were perceived to be more harmful than were chimpanzees in crops [6,9,43] and fruits of the forest [29,43].
Locals commented that "chimpanzees only took what they needed" [17].However, there was a competition for fruits, such as S. senegalensis, because human extraction was in large quantities for national trade [29,10,38].Fires were recurrent every year in every village of the Reserve mainly to open up more croplands.Also, in the RNCD honey was barely stolen by chimpanzees, unlike in Uganda [9].
The fundamental problem in the RNCD is the lack of water.At the end of 2015, in Dindéfélo, drilling for water was carried out in order to extract and supply water to several villages through taps.The drilling was done by the government in a highly protected area of the reserve, up to 40 meters down, in an important area of chimpanzees.If the drilling had taken place in an area outside the reserve, it would have been an excellent project for the local population and would also have benefitted the biodiversity of the Reserve.If taps worked, it would not be necessary to improve the public laundry built by the IJGE.In Segou and Nandoumary, it would be necessary  [11].
Dindéfélo is a village near the mountains, so human presence is very close to the forest every day, and it also has a great tourist attraction for its natural waterfall.It would be essential to control the massive influx of people into the forest with ecotourism and trained and certified local staff because tourism with wildlife, when humans are so close, can be dangerous to both [46,11,8,47,48,9,49,42].

Influences of education, Trees for the Future project and animist
beliefs about the perception of chimpanzee conservation.
Locals who had not received elementary education thought, to a greater extent, that chimpanzees do not attack as opposed to those who had gone to school.This could be explained because if local knowledge is based only on the experience of the vast majority of the times they go to the forest, chimpanzees do not attack them.In some research, it has been found that basic education is another variable that influences the local perception of conservation, as well as gender, age, status, lineage, access to land, power, wealth [11,25].Gadd found in Kenya that locals without elementary education were more open to wildlife tourism and conservation programs because their situation improved.Estrada postulates that multiple solutions are needed for the global problem of species extinction.A master formula is to transform conservation into benefits for the locals and also defray their needs, such as food security, health or education [2,55,58].
In Zimbabwe, researchers have found that the locals did not know the protected area well despite having lived there for years.Education and awareness programs are necessary for people to be aware of conservation and wildlife projects.These programs could change local perceptions and increase participation in conservation management [50].This coincides with our findings that locals who were not participating in Trees for the Future project argued that there were practically no fires in the last year in the RNCD, as compared to those who were participating in the project.
In the same way in The Ivory Coast, child environmental education projects have increased environmental awareness and positively influenced attitudes towards nature [51].In the Congo, they observed a relationship between poverty and lack of conservation of wildlife because they killed animals to eat them.In this way, they gave economic incentives to children attending educational conservation projects, among other measures.This approach helped to reduce poaching of protected species, which led to the more sustainable amount of wildlife in the Congo [52].
Several studies have found influences of religion on conservation of biodiversity.In Guinea-Bissau, Muslims tend to plant fruit trees, so primates are bad because they eat these fruits.Non-Muslims, on the other hand, grow rice, which is less attractive to chimpanzees, so chimpanzees are not perceived as bad.A relationship has been found between the Muslims and anthropo-centrism.Some local communities find similarities between chimpanzees and humans, which favors positive attitudes toward chimpanzees because, if they could not be human and had to choose between the animal kingdom species, they would choose to be chimpanzees [26,11,6].
The widespread traditional belief that if the clothes are burned, the community will become seriously ill would explain that the clothes are hung in the trees in the forest because, in case of a fire, that would not burn.These clothes are eaten by cows and baboons in the forest.Dead animal bodies have been found with clothes inside of them.A wastebasket project to solve the garbage problem was not being effective where the people say that witches dress like chimpanzees, so body parts are used for rituals and acquire magical powers [13,53,20].In Madagascar, the belief in bad luck also exists together with bad omens about future disaster, yet they just see some particular species of primates (Daubentonia madagascariensis) as the messengers of the devil, so that they believe it is necessary to kill them [54].Other ancestral beliefs can favor the killing of chimpanzees, as in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo it is for meat [29].
On other occasions, chimpanzees are killed for medical purposes because of the belief in devils living inside of these animals [17].In Mali, locals do not eat meat, but the Maninka people use it as traditional medicine [35], as in Guinea-Bissau [42].In the RNCD, they use the Patas monkey (Erythrocebus patas) meat to cure diseases or infertility.With respect to chimpanzees, animist stories translate into fear of chimpanzees and, for now, of respect.

However this negative perception of chimpanzees in Dindéfélo and
Nandoumary is different in Segou, because they say that chimpanzees are good because they are like humans and, as a consequence, show a positive attitude toward chimpanzee conservation.In Guinea-Bissau and Uganda, locals do not eat chimpanzees because they see them as being humanlike [6,15,29,42,60].This point of view of chimpanzees being like humans makes a big difference in local perception because it contributes to enhance tolerance, better co-existence, and support for chimpanzee conservation [43].Locals from Guinea Bissau said that chimpanzees had been men who were punished by God for being lazy or fishing on banned days [42] is the same idea as in the RNCD.Another story found by Sousa is that the chimpanzee was a blacksmith transformed into a bush by God [20].In Uganda the idea that chimpanzees only eat what they need makes these primates more human for certain local communities.There are even communities that convert them into flagships or totems.In The Ivory Coast, people do not kill chimpanzees because they are their totem, or in Uganda the chimpanzees are not eaten out of tradition.However, if locals believe that primates are transgressing social rules such as crop raiding or attacks on humans, such positive attitudes become negative and people can kill them [15].This is the problem of the age of the Anthropocene with human population growth, greater demand for markets, expansion of agriculture, fragmentation of habitats, crops feeding and conflicts with local people.Thanks to knowledge of local perceptions and attitudes, we believe that the solution for the RNCD is the zoning and expansion of protected areas rather than promoting human-chimp co-existence [14].
Thus, humans would have their area for crops and helps with programs to improve sustainable agriculture and wildlife would have their habitat and the natural resources that the locals need to add to their area with washhouses and orchards.Family planning and the search for a sustainable balance are also very important.According to Estrada, several investigations on local perceptions and conservation agree on the importance of considering them because they improve the effectiveness to achieve a sustainable coexistence in this complex period of the Anthropocene [2,56,59,[61][62][63].

Conclusions
In conclusion, in one of the poorest areas of Senegal there are ethnic groups with religion and animist beliefs that have an influence on biodiversity conservation.Fear of chimpanzees translates into a fragile respect that can be broken at any time and become a greater threat to these primates.There are conflicts over basic resources (water and trees) in the RNCD.There were significant correlations between local perceptions and education, the environmental project and animism.Local perceptions allow us to design a specific course of action to improve chimpanzee conservation and sustainable coexistence in this complex period of the Anthropocene.

Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 29 December 2017 doi:10.20944/preprints201712.0198.v1 4.2. Conservation of chimpanzees
Local people are afraid of chimpanzees because they think they attack.If a person finds a chimpanzee in the forest, he stops, observes, and if the chimp moves away, the person continues with his activity, but if they see something strange in the chimpanzee, local people run towards the village.The knowledge of these three psychological variables (emotions, thoughts and behaviors) would allow researchers to design a specific program to work on the distorted beliefs of the local population.These local perceptions towards chimpanzees in Senegal coincide with those of other countries such as Uganda

Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 29 December 2017 doi:10.20944/preprints201712.0198.v1
So, it is important to consider this animist belief to solve the problem.An awareness program could be carried out, work on these beliefs and create a recycling project that included old clothes and plastics to provide local people with work.Also, out of the new extracted material, new fabrics and affordable local clothing could be made.
women, promoting positive attitudes toward chimpanzees, fire prevention, recovery of the fruit orchards, reinforcements for sustainable towns like Segou, urgent projects for Nandoumary (sustainable agriculture, reforestation, water wells and laundries, among others), medical and health support and solar panels, among others.The characteristics of the population require measures for the management of conservation with short-term benefits and low-cost local efforts.It would also be necessary to bring the law closer to this remote area with Agent des Eaux et Forêts, which supported the role of Eco-guards in the Reserve, as in Guinea-Bissau

Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 29 December 2017 doi:10.20944/preprints201712.0198.v1 concerning
clothes for this reason.As for baobabs, for example, in Dindéfélo they are practically not seen, and the few that are left are felled, which would be related to the animistic idea that if there are many baobabs (Adansonia digitata) together they attract the devil.Nevertheless, the belief that if felled in the area of the devil, you would become ill.Our results show relationships between animism and fear of chimpanzees by thinking that chimpanzees attack.The Peul tell stories about chimpanzees that kill human babies or that if one encounters them in the forest, afterwards they will find a dead family member at home.That a human baby behaves like a chimp for the Peul is a bad thing.Stories are related to bad luck, the devil, traditional medicine, healing, among others.It could relate in some ways to African sorcery, as in Sierra Leone,

Table A . 2 .
Questions of the interview about chimpanzee conservation.