It is little secret that African wildlife is threatened. Human development, after all, is shrinking the native habitat of countless African species. Meanwhile, elephants are routinely and illegally slaughtered to feed the black-market trade in ivory, while rhinos are slaughtered for their horns, which are used in dubious Chinese medicines. Other animals — from birds, snakes, lizards, and other creatures — are often trapped for sale into the exotic pet trade, while still others, including monkeys, crocodiles, and tortoises, are hunted as bushmeat.
The chimpanzee, however, suffers from all these stressors. Shrinking habitat, the illegal pet trade, and the spears and traps of hunters — sometimes targeted, sometimes not — have reduced the African chimp population from approximately one million at the turn of the 20th century, to an estimated 172,000 to 300,000 today. The Jane Goodall Institute U.K. estimates that African ape populations overall “will decline by an additional 80 percent in the next 30 to 40 years.”
In the Budongo forest of western Uganda, veterinarian Caroline Asiimwe and her colleagues — some of them former poachers themselves — are trying to save chimpanzees, though the work isn’t easy. A war has broken out in and around this 168-square mile reserve between the estimated 800 chimps and the human populations that surround them. With their native resources shrinking, Asiimwe says, the chimps have begun scavenging for food in the cultivated fields surrounding Budongo, where human-animal conflict is inevitable. She notes that on the outskirts of another Ugandan forest, in the Muhorro-Kagadi district, chimps have killed eight children in the last five years.
Attacks go the other way too: Near Budongo, some residents have stoned chimps, attacked them with spears, and even put nails in their heads, Asiimwe says. Others have been killed for use in traditional medicine, while others are dying from illnesses — especially respiratory diseases — transmitted by humans. In other areas, chimps are hunted illegally for food, while many continue to be targeted for capture as exotic pets or for shipment to unregulated zoos around the world. But in Budongo, chimpanzees are typically collateral damage — wounded or killed in the many wire or jaw-like traps set for other animals.
These pressures are difficult to combat. Like everywhere else in Uganda, the population around Budongo is booming, with many people attracted by the discovery of oil and gas in the neighboring Murchison Falls National Park. Refugees from conflicts in northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are also adding to the growth.
But Asiimwe says she is optimistic, and she is trying to save chimpanzees and other wildlife in novel ways — including drafting former wildlife poachers into the effort. The Budongo Conservation Field Station, where Asiimwe works as a conservation coordinator, is providing poachers with alternative livelihoods, and in some cases, they have been hired as “eco-guards.” Their mission: policing the forest and removing the very sort of deadly traps that they themselves once put in place.
Hear more about the Budongo field station in this month’s Undark podcast.
This project was supported in part by a grant from The European Journalism Center, and is part of the series “African Women Scientists on the Move.” Marco Boscolo contributed reporting for this story.