182 The problem of snares
extended our snare removal activities further afield and at the time of writing we are
finding a large number of snares in the Busingiro area to the west of the Sonso range.
There can be little doubt that the very high number of snares in Budongo Forest is
a result of an increasing population resulting from the availability of jobs in the sugar
and tobacco industries. Additionally, Budongo has seen a big increase in pitsawing in
recent years. Pitsawyers combine this activity with vigorous hunting. They are hard
to catch because some of them are legal pitsawyers, while others claim to be legal
pitsawyers if questioned, while in fact they are hunters.^71
Using a global positioning system (GPS), we have been recording the locations of
snares removed since January 2000. Fig. 9.10 shows the location of 2333 snares
collected between 14 February 2000 and 16 April 2004.
The locations where snares are found are influenced by a number of factors of which
one can be clearly seen from this map: relatively few are found in the area to the north
of camp where much BFP research activity takes place and our field assistants move
around every day. The number of snares increases outside the area of the BFP trail
system. Thus we in the BFP are having a negative influence on the setting of snares in
the range of the Sonso chimpanzees.
This fact is borne out once again by recent data compiled by Fred Babweteera, which
show the daily rate of snare removal in the areas where we now operate our snare
removal programme. The data are shown in Table 9.2.
As can be seen from Table 9.2, the Busingiro area (compartments B1 and B2), which is
some 5–10 km to the west of Sonso, had the highest daily rate of snares removed during
this period. Compartment N6 also had a high rate; the reason here may be connected with
the existence of a number of legal (and, probably, some illegal) pitsawyers in the area.
There is now a more insidious aspect of the increased snaring: a small but significant
bushmeat trade has begun along the Masindi–Butiaba road which runs to the south of
Budongo Forest. Until the mid-1990s there was no organized sale of bushmeat; wild
animals were occasionally sold in the local markets by the hunters themselves or their
wives. Today there is evidence of trade in forest meat. We have been informed that the
traders set snares in the forest, collect the animals they have caught, and take them to
particular places along the main road for sale. This is a new development and will
inevitably lead to the setting of more snares and injuries to more chimpanzees. During
the writing of this book, two of our young chimpanzees were caught in snares: in March
2003 Kana, the 3-year-old infant of Kutu,^72 was seen with a wire snare on her ankle, and
in the same month Nora, the 7-year-old juvenile daughter of Nambi was seen with
a wire snare on her wrist. The damage goes on.
An indication of the number of snares collected in the Sonso area over a recent
two-year period can be seen in Fig. 9.11.^73 The number of snares recovered from
(^71) F. Babweteera (pers. comm.)
(^72) At 3 years of age this is the youngest of our chimpanzees to be snared. Indeed, in calculating
snare-related losses, infants are normally excluded. 73
The data on which this figure is based are simply the total numbers of snares collected in each month.
This number should be corrected for the number of search days per month. However, there is no reason to
think that such a correction would materially change the results. The same two snare removers were involved,
and the number of search days each month was more or less constant during the whole period.