Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest : Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation

been very involved in the arboricide programme in Budongo Forest and whom we
had met in Budongo (he stayed with us for a week in the Forest Department rest house
on Busingiro Hill where we lived while we did our chimpanzee studies). He was as
concerned as we were that the use of arboricides on figs and other tree species that pro-
vided food for the chimpanzees (which the Ugandan Forest Department had a mandate
to protect) would reduce their food supply and cause a reduction in their population. He
supported us in a letter we wrote to the Ugandan Forest Department complaining about
the poisoning of fig trees but to little avail: we received a reply stating that chimpanzees
were adaptable and could eat other species.
The net result of the selective logging for mahoganies and other valuable timber trees,
combined with the use of arboricide on Cynometraand other species of ‘weed’, was
apparent many years later and was dramatic (as indeed it was planned to be). Plumptre
(1996) compared the distribution of forest types (an expanded version of Eggeling’s
basic forest types described above) in 1951 and 1990 using maps produced by the Forest
Department’s mapping section.

Timber 17

Not forest

Forest types (1990)

Cynometra

Cynometra–Mixed

Mixed

Woodland

Woodland–Mixed

Maesopsis

Swamp

Uncertain type

Fig. 1.4: Distribution of forest types in 1990 (from Plumptre 1996).