Moment an orphaned baby chimp is rescued after she was found in a tiny wooden box cowering from animal traffickers who had killed her mother

This is the moment a young orphaned chimp was rescued after she was found in a tiny wooden box cowering from the animal traffickers who killed her mother.

The illegal animal traders had kept the terrified three-year-old in the box for two weeks.

And the men had been trying to find a buyer on the lucrative black market when they were stopped at a check point trying to cross into Sierra Leone from Guinea, in west Africa, last week

The traffickers were caught during a joint operation by the Guinea Ministry of Environment, the Gendarmerie and the Guinée-Application de la Loi Faunique (GALF) project.

Charlotte Houpline, director of French wildlife protection group WARA, said many traffickers have already been arrested and sentenced in Guinea sine they launched the project.

A spokeswoman for Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement, said: ‘The three-year old female who was saved last Saturday was the lucky one.

Chimpanzees are the closest genetic living relatives to humans – and their young take years to mature.