In the forests of Sierra Leone, Bala Amarasekaran has spent three decades building a sanctuary, and a life, around orphaned ...

The eco-lodges and tree-covered footpaths of West Africa's largest chimpanzee refuge have been devoid of tourists for more ...

July 15, 2025The doors of West Africa's largest chimpanzee refuge have been closed to tourists for more than two months.:: ...

The eco-lodges and tree-covered footpaths of West Africa's largest chimpanzee refuge have been devoid of tourists for more ...

The eco-lodges and tree-covered footpaths of West Africa's largest chimpanzee refuge, the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in ...

Bala Amarasekaran has never felt that running his world-renowned sanctuary for orphaned chimpanzees in the West African ...

Bala Amarasekaran has never felt like running his world-renowned sanctuary for orphaned chimpanzees in Sierra Leone was truly ...

The sanctuary's keepers have defiantly kept it closed since late May as a protest to spur the government into action over the ...

“Chimps are so much like us, we need to care for them” says Bala Amarasekaran, the founder of Tacugama. He has become something of a legend in Sierra Leone.

That one chimp soon became seven - and the sanctuary was born in 1995. Amarasekaran has managed Tacugama through Sierra Leone’s brutal civil wars and heart-stopping Ebola outbreaks.

Located about an hour’s drive past the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, Tacugama was founded in 1995 by Bala Amarasekaran, who immigrated from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone as a teenager.

SUMMERVILLE — Ebola killed people within a third of a mile of Bala Amarasekaran’s life’s work — caring for 77 chimpanzees in a sanctuary that is the heart of the imperiled species ...