Tacugama

Category: Chimpanzee, Introduction, Tacugama | Date: Feb 05 2008 | By: admin

At Tacugama we spend time and resources to build relationships with the communities around the Western Area Forest Reserve (WAFR) to educate people about signs to look for, what to expect and how to deal with the situation should they ever come into contact with chimpanzees in the wild. These relationships proved invaluable to us at the time of the escape of some of our chimpanzees back in April 2006 (for more information then you can download the newsletter issued shortly after the escape http://www.tacugama.com/tacugamanewsletterjune06.pdf). Information provided by the local communities helped us to rescue the chimps much more easily than we could have done without people’s support.

There are still four chimpanzees at large: Tokoh, Sabie, Charlie boy and the alpha male, Bruno, and we continue to receive many interesting reports on possible sightings from various locations around the WAFR. We assess the information and if we believe it’s strong enough we follow up with a search mission. It is difficult for us to camp indefinitely in these remote locations, due to the harsh condition, logistics and the chimps following no set pattern in their movements. Thankfully, Willie and Pastor, cherish what they do, physically fit and ready to go at short notice.

All our darting kit safely kept under Willie’s jacket and Pastor holding the branch-camouflaged blowpipe, standard equipment that we always take with us out on our missions

In one of these missions, we were fortunate to see Tokoh and Sabie twice some 10 km away from the sanctuary. We have also received many reported sightings of a bulky guy followed by three smaller ones and the descriptions and behaviour certainly points towards our missing four so we feel Bruno and the other three are thriving in the wild almost two years since their escape.

The difficult challenge for us here is how best to ensure that the chimpanzees are safe away from the Sanctuary in the WAFR. The reserve is close to Freetown and suffers from significant human encroachment both for settlement and logging. All of our resident chimpanzees have suffered trauma as a result of human action and will probably not behave in the same way as wild chimpanzees when exposed to human contact. That makes our intended aim of finally rehabilitating our chimpanzees in the wild quite challenging as we need to identify locations for managed release sites away from human settlement and existing wild, territorial populations in Sierra Leone. We’re planning to undertake a national census as no-one really knows the existing status of the wild chimpanzee population but it’s a big job and will need significant donor funds.

Camping out on our field missions
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For now we want to try to keep a close eye on what we believe to be our four ex-residents to try to ensure that they stay safe and away from trouble. Willie and Pastor spent last week out in the bush following up some vital information and just got back, worn out but with some more helpful information to plan the next field mission.

Meanwhile, Gaura’s X- ray result is normal, so we are still unable to pinpoint the underlying cause of his low grade fever in the evenings. A second TB test is being performed. Meanwhile he enjoys the extra care (and some tickling too!) from Dr. Rosa.