‘We cannot replace USAID, but we can do big things’: conservation plots a future without American money

Three chimpanzees catch food thrown to them by a team of caretakers on Monkey Island, Liberia. The chimpanzees were infected with hepatitis B in the 1970s. Photograph: Danielle Paquette//The Washington Post/Getty Images

On 22 January 2024, at the inauguration of the current Liberian president, Joseph Boakai, the US-based Liberian poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley paid tribute to the west African nation’s tropical forests – one of the places where, she said, “our fathers came / centuries ago, and planted our umbilical cords / deep in the soil”.

The forests of Liberia are among the most diverse on the planet, home not only to humans and their ancestral ties but also to rare species such as forest elephants, pygmy hippopotamuses and western chimpanzees. They are also chronically threatened by industrial development, including illegal logging and mining.