Chimps!

Today was the most amazing experience!

Picked up around half 7 this morning, we were taken about half an hour out of Masindi through villages and into the maze of sugar cane. Our guide Gerard then led us along a path which skirted the edge of the sugar cane on one side and an isolated piece of Budongo Forest on the other. 

This section of forest was cut off from the main swathes of Budongo by the introduction of the sugar cane plantation run by Kinyara Sugar. Once upon a time the forest stretched from Masindi all the way to Biso so the early travellers going to the ferry in Butiaba would have travelled through some dense jungle. Today it is quite sad to see the huge tracts of land taken up by the sugar cane but I have been told that the company is a major employer in the area and pays the largest amount of tax of any company to the Ugandan government. As I have found time and again there is nothing straight forward in Africa and issues which appear black and white rarely are.

The 45 chimps in this section of the forest are being monitored and studied through a local trust which has been set up to educate the villagers that the chimps are worth more to them alive than dead and that chopping any more of this section of the forest down will be extremely detrimental for everyone. Gerard has also visited Edinburgh Zoo which has a keen interest in supporting this vulnerable habitat. It has to be one of the richest environments on the planet with the amount of bird life alone drawing ornithologists from around the world. The chimps we were privileged to see today are not on the 'tourist' route so it was incredibly special to be guided in by locals and stand and watch them. None of us could have believed two and a half hours had passed so quickly.

We witnessed a number of chimps making such loud noises that Catheryn in the group jumped with fright when she heard them first! We then saw them eating, making nests to have a rest, playing, grooming, swinging and climbing through the trees, calling to each other and generally getting on with life as a chimp. I lost count of the number we saw but it included several males, females and youngsters.

The main problem with this section of forest is the isolation from the main section which means the gene pool may become compromised at some point in the future if chimps can't pass into different groups. They also need to ensure these chimps are safe and monitored.

It was a truly fascinating experience and Edinburgh Zoo won't be quite the same after seeing them in their natural habitat.

Long live the Budongo Forest!