Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary is one of the most moving and meaningful experiences Sierra Leone has to offer: barely half an hour from Freetown, tucked away in the forest of the hills around the capital, is the country's only chimpanzee refuge. More than a hundred of these great apes live here, rescued from poaching, the pet trade and the destruction of their habitat, in large forest enclosures where they are rehabilitated.
Tacugama was born in 1995 out of one man's determination: Bala Amarasekaran, who years earlier had rescued a little orphaned chimpanzee called Bruno. What began as an act of compassion became a leading conservation centre in West Africa, a driving force for environmental education and a symbol of the fight to protect an endangered species. In 2019, thanks in part to its work, the chimpanzee was declared Sierra Leone's national animal.
This guide explains how to visit Tacugama: how to get there from Freetown, how the fixed-time tours work, how much admission costs, how to stay in its ecolodges and why this visit matters so much for conservation. A close and responsible encounter with chimpanzees that directly supports their rescue and protection, and one of the unmissable trips from the capital.
Tacugama was founded in 1995 by conservationist Bala Amarasekaran and his wife Sharmila, after they rescued an orphaned, malnourished baby chimpanzee in 1989 and named him Bruno. After years of effort, the government gave them land in the forest reserve above Freetown to create the sanctuary. Today it cares for more than 100 chimpanzees rescued from trafficking and hunting, is a centre for education and research, and has survived the civil war, Ebola and a famous chimpanzee escape. In 2019 its campaign led to the chimpanzee being declared Sierra Leone's national animal.
Read the full history ↓The city of freedom and the lion mountains: Freetown grew out of a swampy settlement of freed slaves and is now a chaotic, vibrant capital set between white-sand beaches and forest.
Read the history of Freetown and the peninsula →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Tacugama's story begins in 1989 with an encounter that would change many lives. That year, Bala Amarasekaran, a Sri Lankan-born accountant living in Sierra Leone, was travelling through the interior of the country when he came across a small orphaned chimpanzee, malnourished and tied up, being offered for sale. Moved, he paid about 30 dollars for the animal and took him home to his wife, Sharmila. They named him Bruno and raised him as best they could, discovering first-hand the plight of the orphaned chimpanzees that hunting and trafficking were leaving all over the country.
Bruno was not an isolated case. Amarasekaran soon realised there were many more chimpanzees in the same situation: infants whose mothers had been hunted for their meat ('bushmeat') or who had been captured to be sold as pets, and who ended up chained, sick or abandoned. There was nowhere in Sierra Leone to take them in and rehabilitate them. The couple began caring for more animals, until the need for a proper space became urgent.
The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is an endangered species, and the West African subspecies is among the most threatened. Sierra Leone is home to a significant population, but it is declining because of deforestation, hunting and trafficking. Faced with this situation, Amarasekaran decided a real sanctuary had to be created, and he began a long campaign to secure land and government support.
After six years of negotiations and intense lobbying, the government of Sierra Leone finally granted Amarasekaran a plot of land inside the Western Area Forest Reserve, in the forested hills surrounding Freetown. There, in 1995, the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary was officially born, the first and only one of its kind in the country. The name comes from the area where it sits, deep in the forest a short distance from the capital.
The sanctuary was conceived not as a zoo but as a rescue and rehabilitation centre: large fenced forest enclosures where the chimpanzees could live in groups, in surroundings as close as possible to their natural habitat, while they recovered physically and psychologically from the trauma of being hunted or held captive. The ultimate goal was reintroduction wherever possible, although many chimpanzees, too used to humans or too damaged, would remain in care for life.
From the start, Tacugama combined rescue with education and research. Its location, just half an hour from Freetown, also made it a place to visit, which helped fund the operation and raise public awareness of how important it is to protect chimpanzees and their forest. Little by little, the sanctuary grew until it was home to more than a hundred animals.
Tacugama's history was shaped by the same tragedies that struck the country. During the civil war (1991-2002), and especially during the rebel attacks on Freetown, the sanctuary found itself in the middle of the chaos: at times the staff had to risk their lives to keep feeding the chimpanzees, and the project's survival hung by a thread. That Tacugama pulled through in such circumstances is a testament to its team's determination.
In 2006 came a dramatic and much-discussed episode: a chimpanzee escape. A group of apes managed to get out of the sanctuary, leading to incidents with local residents and a painful reminder of the strength and complexity of these animals. The event put the sanctuary to the test and underlined the need for secure facilities and careful management. Years later, the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic once again put the operation in jeopardy: tourism collapsed, resources ran short and the team had to take extreme measures to protect both people and the chimpanzees, with whom we share much of our genome and many diseases.
After every blow, Tacugama responded with resilience. The sanctuary not only survived but broadened its mission: it added reforestation programmes, energy and water projects for neighbouring communities, scientific research in partnership with international institutions, and environmental education in schools across the country. It thus became far more than an animal refuge: a central player in conservation in Sierra Leone.
One of Tacugama's greatest symbolic achievements came in 2019 when, after years of campaigning by the sanctuary, the government of Sierra Leone officially declared the chimpanzee the country's national animal. The move aimed to link national identity with conservation and to give a boost to the protection of an endangered species whose population in the country was still threatened by deforestation, hunting and trafficking.
The recognition was the result of Tacugama's advocacy work. For decades it had insisted that protecting chimpanzees also meant protecting the forests that human communities depend on: the same wooded hills of the peninsula that regulate Freetown's water and which, once cleared, led to tragedies such as the 2017 Regent mudslide. Chimpanzee conservation was thus presented as part of a bigger cause: the environmental balance of the country.
Tacugama used this momentum to strengthen its education programmes, bringing the figure of the national chimpanzee to schools and campaigns, and to establish itself as a benchmark for conservation in West Africa. Three decades on, little Bruno from 1989 had become the emblem of an entire country.
Today the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary cares for more than 100 rescued chimpanzees and is a well-established centre for wildlife conservation, education and research. Its forest enclosures, rehabilitation programmes and team of caregivers have made it a model on the continent, recognised by the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) and by international scientific institutions that study primate behaviour.
For visitors, Tacugama offers one of the most meaningful experiences in Sierra Leone: a guided tour along the walkways beside the enclosures, where you learn the story of each rescued chimpanzee, and the chance to sleep in rustic ecolodges deep in the forest, waking up to the calls of the apes. Every admission ticket, every night's stay and every remote adoption directly funds the care of the animals and the protection of their habitat.
Just half an hour from a bustling capital, Tacugama shows that tourism can be a force for good: a close, respectful encounter with our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, and tangible support for the people who, despite war, epidemics and a lack of resources, have spent decades fighting to save them. It is, without a doubt, one of the country's must-see visits.
