Tacugama

Category: Chimpanzee, Tacugama | Date: Jul 24 2009 | By: tacugama

Last week saw us receiving little Chippe from Moyamba district. Chippe is about 3-4 years old but small and stunted for his age. He was originally reported as being in captivity by the census team while they were in Moyamba but they were unable to retrieve him. It then took some time to make contact with his keeper but finally we were able to make arrangements for Chippe to come to Tacugama. He will be in quarantine for three months while Mama Posseh works her magic and builds him back to full strength. While we were able to get very limited information about Chippe we know that he was captive for at least four months and suspect that his mum may have been snared and killed. As we reported on one of our census blogs, Moyamba District suffers from human/chimp conflict due to huge loss of forest habitat to agricultural land.

Chippe on arrival
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Chippe yesterday
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Another new arrival has appeared at Tacugama as a result of an unexpected accident! It is our policy not to allow our resident chimps to breed; our focus has to be to use our limited resources on caring for rescued wild chimpanzees. We use contraceptive implants that last approximately 3 years with our mature females. However, accidents can happen and on Saturday 11th July, Babes gave birth – it is too early for us to know whether it is a boy or girl! It’s the second time that Babes has managed to beat the system and her first daughter, Bintu, was born 5 years ago. Mother, baby and big sister are all coping very well.

Babes and new baby on the day of the birth
- Babes was keen to top up her food reserves!
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The new baby at 11 days old
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Sunny and Blama (Blackman’s new name - which is also the name of a town in Sierra Leone) are settling well and listening and watching all of the activity around them with huge interest. They have so much more to see and hear now even though they are still in quarantine! They take good care of each other and Sunny can get jealous when Mama Posseh gives Blama attention.

We’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all of you who responded to our request for help on donations towards the electric fence after our lightening strike hit. The replacement parts are just waiting to clear customs in Freetown and we should hopefully be able to install them soon. Thanks to Catherine M, Kathy S, Wanda H, Sarah J, Perry O, Yvonne N, Sherri S, Joanne Y, Theresa S, Nyree H, Brenton H, Lucia C, Christine C for your generosity.

Daniel L - please could you send an email to adopt@tacugama.sl as we see you have donated to adopt a chimp but we haven’t yet received your email with your contact information , thanks.

Watch this space for another blog coming very soon with an update on Gaura and all his group!

Tags: Chimpanzee, sanctuary, Sierra Leone, Tacugama, wildlife