needs to be focused on practical ways to help the farmers while considering the alternatives
open to the baboons themselves if they are not to raid crops any more.
A further aspect relating to the intractability of crop-raiding by baboons is stressed by
Hill (2002) where she refers to the issue of predictability. Contrasting baboons with
birds, people told her: ‘birds come to the fields early in the morning and again late in the
afternoon/early evening — these are times when the children are free from school so can
be sent to the fields to scare the birds’. She continues:
when people talk of baboons they present a very different picture. Baboons are considered to be
unpredictable — they can come at any time and they will eat whatever is in the field, and what they
do not eat they destroy....In addition to baboons causing more damage than other species they are
also considered very difficult to deal with because 1. people cannot necessarily predict when or
whether they will visit an individual farm, and 2. the protection methods available are not considered
adequate (Hill 2002: 66).Hill contributed to our Farmers’ Workshop in 2001 and gave some useful ideas as to
ways that farmers try to safeguard their crops in other countries (West Africa,
Zimbabwe, Asia, Cameroon and Nigeria). These included scarecrows, trained dogs,
planting non-food crops on the edge of land, fencing, planting thorn or sisal fences,
digging ditches, control shooting, application of chemicals and using chilli peppers
(either burned or chilli grease on strings).
In the ensuing discussion at the Workshop a number of points were made: the lack of
resources to deal with the problem, the increase in baboons since sugar cane had been
more widely planted around the forest, the issue of compensation for crop losses and
the increase in the human population — indeed, humans could be seen as the root of
the problem, for it is they who have increased in number on land previously foraged over
by baboons.
We should remember that the ‘problem of baboons’ is as much a problem of human
beings. The hatred people feel towards baboons is matched, I have no doubt at all, by
a consuming hatred felt by baboons towards people.
Chimpanzees and humans
The preoccupation of people with baboons rather than chimpanzees was brought home
to me when Fred Babweteera and I visited three local villages to address the commu-
nities about the need to protect chimpanzees and try to avoid snaring and trapping them.
In one of the villages, we invited questions. I had noticed a decidedly cool atmosphere
descending over the meeting and when question time arrived it became clear that during
our talk the people had been thinking about baboons the whole time and had imagined
we were trying to stop them from chasing them off their fields. We hastened to explain
the difference between baboons and chimpanzees. Some people knew of chimpanzees
but others did not. This village was less than a mile from the forest but presumably
chimpanzees were rarely or never seen there.
Chimpanzees and humans 207