180 The problem of snares
In the case of snares, we at Sonso camp are surrounded by a state-owned forest which
is full of them. Whether or not it is the responsibility of the authorities to remove
them, during the 1990s no removal had ever taken place. We had discussed the idea of
replacing snares with methods that would be able to catch duikers and pigs but would
allow chimpanzees to release themselves and escape, but this was not viable. So we
decided to go for snare removal. The decision was made easier by the fact that some
funding was made available to us for this project by Debbie Cox, the JGI representative
in Uganda. JGI was willing to let us have a grant to employ two men for snare removal.
The work had been pioneered at Kibale Forest to the south,^69 and we were recommend-
ed to employ two local ex-hunters, who would know where snares are placed and would
be able to find them. Two snare removers came over from Kibale Forest to train our men.
We were cautioned that we should not reward anyone monetarily for bringing in
snares because that could lead to snare manufacture. We were also warned that reprisals
might be a problem. Snare wire costs money and hunters would not appreciate having
their snares removed. This warning proved correct.
We began the project in January 2000, employing two local hunters from Nyakafunjo,
Ofen Anzima and Pascal Muhindo. In January they brought in 231 snares, in February
they brought in 172, in March they brought in 111 : 514 snares confiscated from the forest
in three months. The types of snares were sorted and counted by Julie Munn, to whom
I am grateful for this information (Table 9.1). The snares themselves are shown in Fig. 9.9.
At that time, a student, Jeremy Lindsell, was doing his PhD at Sonso, a study of an
understorey bird species,Pluvel’s Illadopsis, in logged and unlogged forest. Lindsell
was using some equipment to do the study. His logged-forest bird subjects were near to
camp, but his unlogged-forest sample was in the Nature Reserve some 3 km away. In
order to save carrying his equipment to and from camp he left some of it in the Nature
Reserve where it had always been perfectly safe. Some of his equipment was left in the
forest to collect long-term records, e.g. digital thermometers taking records of forest
floor temperature. Now some of his equipment was stolen from the forest. In April when
I visited camp I found he had lost expensive equipment on a number of occasions
and this was beginning to have an impact on his budget and on his data collection. The
village hunters were taking revenge on us.
Besides that, Ofen and Pascal had found small notes scrawled on paper near snares in
the forest. One said (in Swahili): ‘You are eating well now, you will not be able to eat
soon.’ This was a threat that the men might be attacked with pangas (machetes).
We discussed this at camp. Evidently things were getting out of hand. We decided to
stop removing snares at least temporarily and do more intensive education of the village
people to ensure they understood whywe were removing snares — to protect chimpanzees
and not to deprive them of meat. Fred Babweteera, our project director, and I arranged
to go to some nearby villages and talk to the men about our work and why we were
doing it. We found a lot of confusion about our project and what we were trying to do.
(^69) Over a two and a half year period an average of 65 snares per month were removed from Kibale
National Park by a team of two (Wrangham 2000b, quoted in Munn and Kalema 2000).