text: 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 cannot 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.
target: 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 .
  Men stopped at checkpoint trying to cross into Sierra Leone from Guinea .
  Guinea is a hub of wildlife trafficking, but prosecution rates are low .