2008 November | Tacugama

Worrying news…

Category: Chimpanzee, Gaura, Tacugama | Date: Nov 19 2008 | By: tacugama

Unfortunately in the last couple of weeks we’ve had some reports of hunters entering the Western Area Peninsula Forest Reserve carrying guns. While we’re not concerned about Tacugama chimps or visitor and staff safety (we work so closely with our local communities that there are lots of eyes and ears taking care of our immediate sanctuary area) its both illegal and unacceptable for the hunters to be in the forest reserve. Over the last few months we’ve enjoyed hearing wild chimps calling to our own with increasing frequency and only on Saturday five wild chimps were seen playing close to our local dam. It’s these guys and other forest inhabitants that we’re concerned about so our small patrol team are watching carefully and we’re in close contact with the enforcement authorities. We’re hopeful that the hunters will be apprehended and prosecuted before long.

Empty cartridges found by the patrol team
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Tags: , Chimpanzee, sanctuary, Sierra Leone, Tacugama, wildlife

6 responses so far

Obama makes it ……… so does Boyze!

Category: Chimpanzee, Tacugama | Date: Nov 10 2008 | By: tacugama

It has been a long, hard 3 months for Boyze, going through the integration process to join Phillip’s group. Introducing an adult male into a well established group, including several adult males is indeed a challenging task!

Boyze’s initial introduction to the alpha male – Phillip – started off well (see earlier post), but after a couple of weeks Boyze made a wrong move and was punished badly by Phillip. It took a month for one of his wounds to heal. Thankfully the incident was a one-off and both chimps worked hard to patch it up. Phillip was still keen to accept Boyze, who learned from his mistake and tried his best to be submissive towards Phillip.

As this friendship grew, we were able to introduce Boyze to all the females and juveniles in the group. Boyze worked hard, very hard… sometimes he even faked playing with the little ones to win the hearts of their mothers! (We have 4 juveniles who were born into this group about 4 years ago, before we managed to improve our contraceptive routine.)

Boyze with young Gara
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