Further cases of trapping 217Kasongoire Forest to the southwest of Kasokwa Forest in April 2002. The case had been
brought to the attention of JGI by Kyamanywa.
This chimpanzee was first sighted on Thursday 11th April by the Kinyara sugar cane guards. It was
seen dragging a large man-trap on one of its limbs... They saw the chimpanzee up in a tree with
the rest of the party staying around and extremely agitated. They were vocalizing and displaying
all the time.
On Monday 15th April Dr Richard Ssuna and Isaac Mujaasi set out for Masindi. We met both
Richard Kyamanywa and the Agriculture Manager of KSW with whom we went out to find the
chimpanzees.
Before we entered the forest, the participants were addressed about all the possible approaches
and the gravity of the task that lay ahead. A drill was carried out about the use of the net and our
reaction in case the chimpanzee attacked. After that, we prepared our veterinary gear and set out
tracking the chimpanzees.
Just before we tracked them down, a faint foul smell was sensed. Chimpanzees were finally
found feeding in a Pseudospondias microcarpatree. We only identified two infants, a female in
estrous swelling, a female with a missing hand and a normal adult male as the rest ran away after
seeing us. In this same area we discovered the remains of a decomposed chimpanzee.
There was a 40 cm long metallic trap, weighing approximately 12 kg with the teeth tightly
locked along the entire row of the first phalangeal bones of digits one to four of the right hand
(Ssuna 2002).Ssuna recommends that ‘use of man-traps should be completely outlawed. This follows
the amnesty that was arrived at by the district administrators where locals were required
to voluntarily hand in the traps for the manufacturing price’.^88 He recommends that
personnel should be appointed to oversee the enforcement of the ban on these devices.
Another case of trapping was written up by Kyamanywa:
On Sunday 26 May 2002, in Kasongoire Forest to the southwest of Kasokwa, a chimpanzee was
reported caught in a mantrap [the name used locally for large leg-hold traps] by two Kinyara
Sugarworks cane guards. The chimpanzee was seen carrying the trap with both hands, moving
awkwardly on its feet through a buffer zone between the forest and sugar cane plantation. It was
unclear which hand was trapped. The chimpanzee was moving in a group of three: 2 adults and
1 juvenile. On Monday 27 May the trap was found...and brought back to the offices of KSW. The
metal trap weighed around 7 kg. The mechanism of the trap was weak, the teeth of the trap did not
close tightly, this indicates that the chimpanzee probably pulled its hand free of the trap suffering
only minor injuries to the hand. There was no evidence of blood or flesh on the trap or at the site
where the trap was found. However between the teeth of the trap there were some hairs and a thin
section of skin which looked to be from a chimpanzee (Kyamanywa 2002b).On 25 July 2002 another chimpanzee was caught in a large leg-hold trap or man-trap
in the vicinity of Kasokwa Forest but it escaped with injuries to its wrist and hand.
Apparently this trap had been set with banana leaves in it, so that it would not cut off the
(^88) In fact, a by-law was passed to this effect in 2001, but awareness of it, let alone enforcement, is minimal.