186 The problem of snares
under consideration. More intensive co-operation between UWA and NFA is also now
being discussed.^74
The constant presence of researchers around the Sonso community has helped to
reduce snare-setting. During the Christmas break when most of the staff and students
are away, hunters tend to take advantage and set more snares around Sonso (they know
that this area has many duikers). For this reason we recently decided to have some staff
members stay on over the Christmas break. Of our team of four snare removers, two
work throughout the Christmas period.Live-trap project
While we have made no more than limited progress with the snaring problem, we have
been somewhat more successful in regard to the problem posed to chimpanzees by leg-
hold traps. In March 2001, BFP organized a Workshop for local farmers.^75 It was
designed to facilitate interaction between BFP and the local community. In September
the previous year, Fred Babweteera, the Director of BFP, and I had discussed how best
to organize it. We felt that it should to some extent be driven by the community
rather than us setting the agenda. In consultation with the local leaders, 14 villages
bordering the Budongo Forest Reserve were selected to participate in this workshop.
Each village identified and prioritized key issues they wished to be addressed and select-
ed one representative to participate in the workshop. The same issues were raised by all
14 villages. The five topics for the Workshop were those rated most important in all the
villages. For our part, we then looked for people with local expertise on each of these
topics to introduce and guide the discussions.
The five topics selected by the representatives were as follows: micro-finance and self-
help, seed collection and tree-planting, crop-raiding and vermin control, bee-keeping,
and collaborative forest management. When March came, we had a highly productive
week (Fairgrieve 2001). For present purposes the day on crop-raiding and vermin con-
trol was the important one. For crop-raiding local expertise was provided by Dr Kate
Hill who had worked on this topic in the local community (Hill 1997, 1998, 2000). We
shall discuss her work in Chapter 10. For vermin control we chose Christopher
Byarugaba, Senior Game Assistant of Masindi District Local Government, and Head of
the District Wildlife Management Unit.
Byarugaba turned up at Sonso before the day of his presentation to the Workshop with
a truckload of poles and some local men, who under his direction constructed a sizeable
wooden structure with a sliding wooden trap door at one end and a wire mesh roof. In
his talk he discussed the problems faced by local farmers, the work of his unit, the
designation of baboons, bush-pigs, vervet monkeys and porcupines as vermin, and the
lack of sufficient resources (staff, transport, fuel) to do the job of vermin control(^74) I am grateful to Andy Plumptre and Fred Babweteera for the information in this paragraph. Responsibility
for its accuracy remains, however, with me — V.R. 75
We are grateful to DfID for funding this Workshop.