The background to snaring 165- Mukwano — right foot damaged
- Kewaya — right hand damaged
- Shida — left hand lost
- Kana — snare on right ankle
- Nora — snare on right wrist
- Muga — right hand lost
- Wilma — right hand lost
- Beti — right hand snared — recovered
- Zig — snare on right wrist
If 16/49 (32.6%) of non-infant Sonso chimpanzees are suffering from snare injuries,
then, in so far as the Sonso range is representative of the whole forest with its population
of 584 chimpanzees, there may be as many as 190 injured chimpanzees in the whole for-
est. There may be more, because in the Sonso range (see below) we are removing snares
from the forest every day. On the other hand, there may be less because the Sonso range
is closer to human habitation than some of the ranges of other communities in the forest.
If these factors balance out, then we may be looking at approximately the right figure. It
is a sobering thought that in one forest of just 136 square miles there could be 190 injured
chimpanzees, 1.4 for each square mile of forest. And we have to remember that not only
is Budongo Forest a Reserve, i.e. a Protected Area, but we are talking about the range of
the Sonso chimpanzees which receive all the protection the BFP has to offer.
The background to snaring
The people of Western Uganda, where the Budongo Forest and other forests along the
escarpment of the Rift Valley are located, are for the most part subsistence farmers with
a very low income. We shall return to look at the human population and its problems in
the next chapter, but for the moment we need to recall that for these people meat is
a luxury. They are subsistence agriculturalists, growing a variety of crops (cassava is the
poor man’s staple in the area) and most days they do not have any meat. If families have
any domestic animals they have a goat or a few chickens, but very many do not have any
at all. If they want to eat meat, they have to buy it in the market. Beef, goat, chicken and
occasionally pork are all locally available but at a price: beef costs 2000 Uganda
shillings a kilo (about 66 UK pence) but many families do not have more than 100 or
200 shillings to spend in the course of a week.
Given these facts, it is not hard to imagine the allure of walking into the forest and
placing snares on the trails that criss-cross the forest floor and returning a day or two
later to see what has been caught. Snares used to be made of tough thin lianas and