220 The Kasokwa Forest chimpanzees
● How people can be educated in chimpanzee conservation given the attacks by
chimpanzees on humans.
● How to dissuade immigrants from settling close to the forest.
● How to reduce the level of encroachment on forest land.
● Whether a buffer zone could be established between the main forest and surrounding
croplands, and what it would consist of.
● Whether tree corridors, perhaps along rivers where trees have been cut down, could
be provided to enable chimpanzees to move safely from one area to another, and to
the main forest block.
● Whether setting up more eco-tourism projects would improve the situation for people
and chimpanzees.
● How best to demarcate areas of public or communal land and protected areas.
● How to enforce new regulations and ensure boundaries are known and respected.
These attacks are causing a hardening of attitudes towards chimpanzees around the
Budongo Forest. It seems that when the density of the human population increases to
the point where they start using marginal land adjoining the forest and planting this land
with fruits, the gardens become irresistible to chimpanzees from the forest, the more so
if those chimpanzees are short of food themselves. Then a real war begins, with fatalities
on both sides. Chimpanzees use their teeth, humans use traps, stones and spears. To a
zoologist this is a case of feeding competition between two sympatric, closely related,
species. In the real world it presents a tremendous problem: the villagers are angry,
those concerned with wildlife management are concerned and the chimpanzees are both
afraid and defensive. Indeed, their very survival is at stake.
The worst incident to date occurred during the writing of this book. On Friday 4 July
2003, sugar cane harvesters set fire to a field of cane belonging to an outgrower in the
village of Kijweka near Kasokwa Forest Reserve. When fields are burned in this way,
the fire is set around the edges of the field and it is burned towards the middle. Any
animals caught in the fire run out and are killed by the harvesters using spears. On this
occasion three of Kyamanywa’s study animals were in the field: a mother, Amooti, her
juvenile daughter Amata, aged 5–7 years and her infant son Amanya, aged 2 years
1 month. The mother escaped with severe burns and is thought to have died later. The
two offspring were burned to death. The juvenile female was seen to run out of the fire
but on encountering the men with spears she fled back into the flames and died. Nothing
more horrible can be imagined. Had any effort been made to establish whether there
were chimpanzees in the field before the fire was set they could surely have been flushed
out. Evidently the men concerned were not bothered. Pictures of the burnt individuals are
too gruesome to publish. Sean O’Hara, Assistant Director of BFP, wrote to the General
Manager and the Agricultural Manager of Kinyara Sugar Works on 11 July 2003