some years KSW has been killing baboons to try to control the problem, it is new for any
appreciable number of chimpanzees to be raiding the sugar. In past times, chimpanzees
would occasionally take a small amount of sugar from the main KSW plantations
during the course of their movements along the riverine forest strips to the south of
Budongo. They were seen by staff of KSW and their presence was tolerated. When
they occasionally took mangoes and paw-paws from village shambas they were tolerated
because they did not take much food and their presence was appreciated by the
indigenous population.
With the expansion of sugar production outgrowers have been co-opted by KSW
to increase sugar production on privately owned fields right up to the edge of the
main block of the Budongo Forest. The owners of these small fields receive payment
from KSW according to the amount of sugar they produce. They are therefore eager to
maximize their production and are unwilling to allow animals to crop-raid. The result
is a proliferation of snares and traps (including large ‘man-traps’) in the sugar fields on
the border of the forest. Any prevailing attitude that the chimpanzees can be tolerated
seems to have disappeared in the new conditions. In one village it was even said that the
chimpanzees were a greater threat than baboons (F. Babweteera, pers. comm.).
Evidently because the outgrowers are not local people but immigrant workers,
and because they are dependent on the income from sugar to live on (having no alterna-
tive income and perhaps also no land on which to grow food crops), they have a nega-
tive attitude to the chimpanzees as well as baboons and other crop-raiding species
and are ready to kill them or maim them in order to dissuade them from approaching
their fields.
The proposal suggested in the BFP’s document was to set up a buffer zone between
the main Budongo Forest Reserve and the sugar fields. This had already been discussed
a number of times between BFP personnel such as A. Plumptre, C. Bakuneeta,
V. Reynolds and F. Babweteera, and KSW personnel such as G. Pollok, G. Macintyre
and P. Wyatt. At the Second Budongo Conference held at Nyabyeya Forestry College
on 7–8 September 2000, attended by the KSW Sugar Outgrowers Manager and many
other local officials, the idea was discussed again. All agreed on the need for a buffer
zone of some kind. From the point of view of BFP, a buffer zone would to some extent
at least protect the chimpanzees. From the point of view of KSW, a buffer zone would
236 The future of Budongo’s chimpanzees
Table 12.6: Distance of sugar cane outgrowers’
fields from the boundary of Budongo Forest Reserve
(courtesy of Gideon Monday, unpublished data).
Distance from No. of plots
boundary (m)
0 (inside the boundary) 2
09
1–5 22
5–10 5
10 2