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 . Scroll down for video . This orphaned chimp was found cowering in a tiny box terrified of the animal traffickers who killed her mother . 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 . She said : 'Slowly the change that is needed is happening . We have been supporting the Government of Guinea for four years now to strengthen law enforcement . Facilitating the arrest and conviction of wildlife traffickers is the main part of our work . 'And we want to target mainly the major traffickers to tackle head-on its major obstacle - corruption . ' She added that Guinea , as well as all the other African countries home to great apes , have a low rate of prosecution for animal trafficking . The traffickers , who kept the three-year-old alive with food ( pictured ) had been trying to find a buyer for her . 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 . 'She could very easily have ended in the house of some wealthy foreigner or even in an official zoo , travelling out of the country with false documents . 'But even more probably she might not even survive , as the estimations are that for one young ape , smuggled out of Africa , 10 others die on the way , as the traffickers are not able to provide them with proper care . 'Other horrific numbers are unknown - the babies , which are detected and in best case seized , like this our one , present only a minority of all poached and sold ape babies . 'By easy calculation , we can estimate the number of chimpanzees lost only in Guinea during last years to reach tens of thousands . The illegal animal traders had kept the terrified three-year-old chimpanzee in the box for two weeks . 'And hundreds of thousands in the all sub-Saharan Africa . This crime will drive the chimpanzees in wild to the extinction within few decades , if it is not stopped . 'Little apes are like human children . To survive , they need not only food , they need love and care . Trauma , which they experience when they see their mother and their family being killed , is not easy to forget . 'When their family is attacked and mother killed , they can not do anything else than cling to her . And then they are torn away from mother´s still warm body by the same men who killed her , falling easily into depression and deprivation . 'Yet the future of this particular female looks brighter . She was not seriously injured nor fatally traumatised . Immediately after rescue she was accepted by a sanctuary that takes care of orphaned chimpanzees who survived the slaughter of their families . 'There she has a second chance , starting with a long process of rehabilitation to overcome the traumas they suffered and hoping to one day be back to the wild . ' Chimpanzees are the closest genetic living relatives to humans - and their young take years to mature . They were stopped at a check point trying to cross into Sierra Leone from Guinea , in West Africa , last week . The country is a hub of wildlife trafficking internationally where apes , ivory , skins , reptiles , parrots , shark fins and manatees are illegally exported by organised crime syndicates . Since 2007 , more than 130 chimpanzees and 10 gorillas were exported from Guinea to China with valid CITES permits , which classified these animals as having been bred in captivity - despite no captive breeding programmes existing in Guinea . According to UN Great Apes Survival Partnership ( GRASP ) the poachers have to kill approximately 10 chimpanzees to get one baby . So for 130 chimps , exported out of the country , 1,300 of their family members were slaughtered.. One year ago GALF , the Guinea Conakry branch of WARA provided information which lead to the arrest of one of the most notorious ape traffickers in Guinea , Ousmane Diallo . He was sentenced to a year in prison in July 2013 following an 18 month meticulous investigation by GALF . During the investigations , he boasted on video that he had trafficked more than 500 chimpanzees , a live lion and panthers .
Animal traders had kept terrified three-year-old in the box for two weeks . They 'd been trying to find a buyer for the chimp on lucrative black market . Score: 7