Karl Ammann

Karl Ammann (born in 1948 in St. Gallen, Switzerland) is a conservationist and wildlife photographer who has spent most of his career in the Congo basin.

Ammann started his career in Africa as a photographer in the early 1980s, photographing cheetahs, but later turned to work on great apes. In 1988, he became witness to the bushmeat trade, and has since worked hard to bring the trade and its effect (particularly on great apes) to the attention of the conservation community and the world. Using his photography skills, he has taken pictures of the victims of the bushmeat trade that to many where shocking and revolting, and he has been accused of exaggerating the problems. With the publishing of the books Eating Apes (with Dale Peterson) and Consuming Nature, the problem has come to the attention of the world.

In his years working in Congo, Ammann has funded and supported research of another population of extremely large bodied eastern chimpanzee now known as the Bili ape. Though it has been studied by prominent researchers, much remains to be discovered about its distribution and behavior. Because it is currently hunted as part of the DRC's bushmeat trade it is vital to continue research in this area before this population is eliminated

Karl Ammann appeared on Time Magazine's list of "Heroes of the Environment" October 2007.