12. The future of Budongo’s chimpanzees
and of the chimpanzees of
Uganda as a whole
The party for Independence Day was a great success. We started with lunch at 2 — boiled leg of
beefmatokesweet potatoesgreens, all plentiful and nicely cooked...After lunch the drinks
appeared, ‘tonto’ (sour banana liquid, fermented with some sorghum put in as grains), and the local
form of beer, made of millet and drunk hot from buckets through straws. The atmosphere was very
nice, transect cutters, field assistants, Chris, Andy, Chris F, Duane, Kate, Peace, me, some sawmill peo-
ple who’d come over, and Paitho. Lilian and Joy served the tonto in glasses, and also there now
appeared waragi in glasses which circulated strictly among the Ugandans. People sat and talked, some
went away and others arrived. George arrived and told us a long story about a tortoise and a monkey
and a grinding stone. As the afternoon wore on the heavy rain came and we moved indoors and then it
stopped and we moved out again. The women and children danced and sang for us muzungus. The
men sat at one side, the women at the other. As it got later and dusk arrived Zephyr’s tape recorder
began to play and the dancing began in earnest....the usual jigging about. This went on into the
evening and early night, children joining in and some falling asleep by the door of the house. Finally
at 10 p.m. Kate, Andy and I made an omelette & toast and retired to our beds (10 October 1993).The modern setting
In my book The Apes(Reynolds 1967) I foresaw the extinction of the great apes unless
steps were taken to protect them. In Budongo, large-scale mechanized logging and
poaching used to be the main problems. This situation has gradually changed, with ille-
gal pitsawing, snaring and population pressure being the main threats in recent years
(Reynolds, in press). Today, mechanized logging has all but ceased, and none of the four
sawmills in Budongo is functioning. The illegal pitsawyers who had the run of the forest
during the 1990s have removed most of the large mahoganies, even in the Strict Nature
Reserve (Compartment N15, which was set up in 1944 and where many of our studies
of unlogged forest have been done). This fine area of forest, where no logging of any
kind had ever been allowed, remained sacrosanct until 2001–2002 when it came under
pressure as the last place where fine big mahoganies could be found, and has been
ravaged by illegal logging teams, working at night. Singer (2002) disclosed the extent of