EXPLORE (^) | THROUGH THE LENS
The
Conflict
Zone
WHEN HUMANS AND CHIMPS
CLASH IN A UGANDAN
VILLAGE, A PHOTOGRAPHER
SEES FEAR, GRIEF—AND
ULTIMATELY ACCEPTANCE.
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
BY RONAN DONOVAN
I TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH through the window of an
abandoned home in a village in western Uganda. As I
watched, one wild chimpanzee entered the yard, then
another. Though they stared hard at the windows,
I knew they couldn’t see me behind the mirrored
glass—and I was glad.
During past fieldwork, I’d been around scores of
wild chimpanzees and shadowed them at close range.
Yet until this photo assignment in 2017, I had never
tried to hide from chimps. I had never even imagined
writing such a sentence.
That was before I met the Semata family and saw
firsthand how depleted land and forest, and scarce
food and crops, can unleash competition between
primates, those inside houses and those outside.
FOR AS LONG AS I CAN remember, I’ve felt at home
in the natural world. After college I worked for eight
years as a field biologist, studying spotted owls in
Yosemite National Park, marine mammals off the
coast of Africa, and wild chimpanzees in Uganda’s
Kibale National Park. Primatologist Richard Wrang-
ham’s long-term research project there sought to
understand wild chimpanzee behaviors, and possible
human and environmental impacts.
For most of 2011, I followed chimps that had been
habituated to human presence, gathering data
throughout the day. They were trusting animals after
decades of neutral encounters with their observers.
Having never been fed or directly hurt by a person,
they were indifferent to me.
But as Wrangham’s Kibale research confirmed,
behavior—human and chimpanzee—will change
as circumstances demand. Like us, chimps adapt to
exploit new food sources if existing ones disappear.
Also like us, chimps are omnivores that defend their
home territory from other groups of their species.
Chimps understand aggression: Throw a rock at a
30 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
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