Located 63 km south of the capital Kampala, Ngamba Island on Lake Victoria is a sanctuary to Uganda’s endangered chimpanzees.
At this island measuring 100 acres of rainforest, 44 chimpanzees found sanctuary after being rescued by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) from their captors in western Uganda and some outside the country, according ecologists.
These chimpanzees are hundreds of kilometers away form their homeland in western and parts of central Uganda where they faced brutal treatment from their closest relatives, men.
While these 44 chimpanzees are now safe, the rest of their colleagues numbering about 5,000 in the East African country are on the verge of extinction.
Ecologists warn that in Africa the number of countries that have chimpanzees is likely to fall further from the current 21 countries.
Previously 25 countries in Africa’s equatorial belt stretching from west, central and east Africa had chimpanzees.
"Four countries in western Africa have got chimpanzees extinct in the last ten years. If we do not do anything now, in the next 20 years we will have even the rest of the remaining 21 African countries without any chimpanzees," said Lilly Ajarova, executive director of Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust (CSWCT).
CSWCT is a nongovernmental organization running Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary with funding mainly from international conservation groups.
Conservationists say the major threats to chimpanzee survival in Uganda are deforestation and poaching.
These twin threats have already decimated the number of chimpanzees in Uganda to about 5,000 from the tens of thousands that existed before the 1960s.
The widespread deforestation in the central and western parts of the country where the chimpanzees’ habitants are has led to displacement or death of the primates.
Experts warn that this deforestation is not about to stop because of the country’s increasing population and the search for land for settlement and farming.
Because of the country’s rapid population growth, many chimpanzees now find themselves surrounded by villages and gardens in areas where they were free to roam.
This has exposed them more to the problem of poaching which also manifests itself through bush meat trade and pet trade.
Poachers lay snares in bushes to trap chimpanzees and other game like antelopes.
When the chimpanzees fall into these traps they are either killed or they lose their limbs.
At Ngamba, bones of a chimpanzee that fell victim to such snares are displayed to highlight the danger chimpanzees face from snares.
Conservationists say that out of the 5,000 chimpanzees in Uganda about 25 percent of them in tourist and research groups are missing hands or feet as a result of the snares from wire traps set by the poachers.
Predation of chimpanzees and close proximity to humans brings another threat to their survival in the wild.
Due to their close relatedness to humans, the opportunities for disease transmission are high.
Chimpanzees and humans share similar physiological and genetic characteristics. This means they share many viruses, bacteria and fungi.
Some scientists have linked diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola, polio, anthrax, respiratory infections to man’s closeness to chimpanzees.
When UWA rescues chimpanzees from their captors or those that are abandoned or orphaned, it hands them to ecologists at Ngamba.
Once in the safety of the sanctuary, they are rehabilitated and given long-term care with a potential of reintroduction back to the wild.
The sanctuary provides them with food, medical care, security and the social companionship that they lack when they are victims of pet trade.
They are given regular meals that mostly consist of fruits and porridge to supplement the 20 per cent of what they get from the forest.
In the evenings they return back home to a holding facility.
Other abandoned chimpanzees are kept at the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, another sanctuary where people are taught the importance of conserving them.
Annually schools gather at the center located 40 km south of Kampala to celebrate the birthday of Zakayo, probably the oldest chimpanzee in the country living in captivity.
Zakayo heads a family of 13 chimpanzees among which include two of his wives, Amina and Ruth.
Since sanctuaries are only a short-term solution to the problem of poaching and deforestation, conservationists in Uganda have embarked on sensitizing the local communities on alternative livelihood.
On Myende Island neighboring Ngamba Island, CSWCT provides assistance to Myende Community Primary School.
Alonsio Omerikit, the director of the school said the pupils are taught about conserving chimpanzees and are at times given study tours to Ngamba Island.
The women on the island are also taught how to set up self-help projects like making handcrafts which they sell to tourists.
Elsewhere especially in western Uganda, similar conservation programs are taking place.
People in communities neighboring the chimpanzee habitants also share a percentage of the money earned from people touring the chimpanzees.
Source: Coastweek [December 03, 2010]