the illegal mahogany trade and the fact that members of the Forest Department had
been involved in it; the matter was featured in the New Visionin November 2002;^90 at
the time of writing matters have been taken in hand but the damage has largely been
done. Perhaps, as suggested by Driciru (2001), it will only be when some form of
Collaborative Forest Management is working on the ground that the mahoganies of
Budongo will be safe; their safety depending in that case on the fact that local people
will then have a stake in the profits derived therefrom. At present such benefits are
denied to local people, as was shown by Obua et al. (1998) in a study of 200 households
in eight villages around Budongo. Their conclusion was that current mistrust of the
Forest Department would only be diminished when local communities ‘could be
empowered to co-manage and benefit from forest resources in their vicinity’ (p. 113).
Shocking though the mahogany pillage is to us at the BFP, it remains a fact that this
will not have directly affected the chimpanzees.^91 They did not use the Nature Reserve
very much because the surrounding logged forest provided them with much more food.
As explained in earlier chapters, selective logging has the effect of removing species
such as mahoganies that are inedible to primates and they tend to be replaced with
different tree species many of which provide edible fruits, flowers and leaves.
Poaching for chimpanzees themselves became a serious problem during the era of
civil wars (1971–1986), with Budongo chimpanzee babies being smuggled to Entebbe
airport in boxes in the back of vehicles and thence being exported world-wide. Today
this trade is small to non-existent for Ugandan chimpanzees, but there remains a trade
across Uganda of baby chimpanzees from DRC, some of which are found and confis-
cated by JGI at Entebbe and then cared for until they can be released on to Ngamba
Island sanctuary in L. Victoria. For example, in May 2002 a chimpanzee smuggling
sting netted three Congolese men and a woman in Kisenyi District in the southwest of
Uganda who were trying to sell a 3-year-old chimpanzee for US $4000. Some of the
very young chimpanzee babies die even if they are confiscated; all are in poor condition
when they arrive at Entebbe and require (and receive) a lot of medical and personal care.
Today the threats to chimpanzees arise from two main sources: snaring (Chapter 9)
and population increase coupled with habitat destruction. For example, along the
Masindi–Butiaba road, where it passes through Budongo Forest, there appears to be
encroachment of forest at various places (see Fig. 12.1). I made enquiries locally and
was told that this was not Forest Reserve land but was private forest land, owned by an
Asian whose name could not be remembered. In another place I was told it was owned
by BAT, the British American Tobacco company, for whom many local people grow
tobacco. The land being felled, burned and planted was certainly very close to the border
224 The future of Budongo’s chimpanzees
(^90) By this time the New Visionhad run a series of articles on the plunder of Budongo Forest — see, for
example, the issues for 30 July 2002 (‘Illegal loggers plunder Budongo’), 27 August 2002 (‘Loggers bribe
Budongo rangers’), and the Editorial Opinion column on 31 August 2002 (‘Save Budongo Forest’). Also in
August 2002 the New Visionhad run a feature ‘Budongo guards want guns’, based on the fact that illegal
loggers were resorting to violence in pursuit of their aims. I wrote to the Acting Commissioner for Forestry on
27 April 2002 and received a reply on 22 May 2002.
(^91) They will have been affected indirectly. The value of the forest lay in its potential as a money-spinner for
Uganda if the mahogany had been effectively managed. Loss of value of the forest decreases the effort that
authorities will put into its careful management for long-term timber production and increases the chance that
it will be cut down or sold off.