Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest : Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation

Snare removal project 185

compartment N3, in which the BFP is located, declined until December, 2002. This
provides good evidence that the programme was having the desired effect. It was also
contributing to an undesired effect by leading to higher levels of snaring elsewhere. We
are counteracting this by having our snare removers work both close to camp and more
distantly, if necessary camping overnight in the forest at more distant locations.
The increase in 2003 remains to be explained.
Plumptreet al. (2003) in their survey of the chimpanzees in all of Uganda’s forests
found the greatest amount of hunting sign in Budongo and its neighbour to the south,
Bugoma, of any of the western forests. Most of the sign was encountered around the
Sonso area and to the east of Sonso, with an additional hot spot in the Busingiro area
(we return to this later — see Fig. 12.4). These are areas where owing to the existence
of trails made by illegal loggers extracting mahogany, hunters (often the illegal and legal
loggers themselves) are able to move freely in the forest. Our own trail system is also,
undoubtedly, used by hunters. If we compare Budongo and Kibale forests, both of
which have research projects with trail systems, the situation is seen to be much worse
at the present time in Budongo. One major difference is that Kibale Forest is now
a National Park falling under the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and about 60
rangers patrol the forest looking for poachers. By contrast, Budongo Forest is a Forest
Reserve falling under the Forest Department (FD, now renamed the National Forest
Authority, NFA) and has only a modest number of rangers and forest guards whose role
includes anti-poaching patrols, supervision of logging activities and stock-mapping.
Forest guards can conduct patrols with armed policemen but it is rare for law-breakers
in the forest to be caught. There is a request by NFA staff to be armed but this is still

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Fig. 9.11: Snares recovered in the Sonso community range, June 2001–May 2003
(courtesy S. O’Hara).