Tacugama

As well as caring for confiscated chimps at the sanctuary, Tacugama also works to protect wild chimpanzees and their habitats in Sierra Leone.

The Sierra Leone National Chimpanzee Census (SLNCCP) completed by Tacugama in 2010 showed that over half of the wild chimpanzees in Sierra Leone are living outside of protected areas. In many of these areas the natural forest habitat is being lost as a result of activities such as logging, agriculture & mining bringing chimpanzees closer to human settlements. Wild chimps are trying to adapt to survive in these changing environments but this can bring problems when they raid farm crops to replace forest foods that are no longer available. Human-wildlife conflict is an increasing problem and in late 2011 Tacugama started pilot projects in some affected communities.  These projects are working with the communities to provide alternative livelihoods and create guardianship for the wild chimpanzees still living in the area.

We have recently started a research project to study the wild chimps in two of these communities.

A villager points out which animals she has observed in the area.

The project, led by Rosa Garriga, is being implemented in the Moyamba district and consists of two parts: community interviews and a camera trap study. The interviews aim to gain more information about crop losses due to animals and the role chimpanzees play in these losses.  They also help the research team to determine the areas where wild chimpanzees are active and so where camera traps should be set.

Konkofa Marah and Yirah Koroma preparing the camera trap.

The first field trip in December involved 50 interviews in 10 villages and placing 16 camera traps. These are remotely activated cameras that are equipped with motion sensors and take pictures only if something is moving past. The analysis of the interviews and the photos captured will be shared with the communities to help with generating ideas as to how human-chimpanzee / human-wildlife conflict can be resolved.

The team had to cross some difficult terrain to get to the research site!

The team are now back in Moyamba to undertake further interviews and reposition the cameras. Hopefully we’ll have captured some interesting photos that we’ll be able to share with you in future blogs. We are grateful for the support that we’ve received for developing and analysing the questionnaires from Tatyana Humle and the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the UK. This important project has been made possible thanks to grants from Barcelona Zoo, the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and Lush Cosmetics.

The view after a hard day’s work.

Following on from yesterday’s catch up with the chimps – here’s our catch up with some of the rest of our activities…

Apart from our direct care of the almost 100 chimps in Tacugama we’ve been stepping up our overall conservation and outreach activities in and out of Sierra Leone. At the end of May we held a 3.5 day Population and Habitat Viability Assessment (PHVA) workshop with the support of the IUCN CBSG (Conservation Breeding Specialist Group) to further analyse the information collected through our National Chimpanzee Census Project that we reported on last year. The workshop included a broad range of stakeholders from government, local communities and international primatologists and will lead to the development of a national chimpanzee conservation action plan. It’s an important strategic step towards securing more support and action to ensure the long term survival of chimpanzees in Sierra Leone.

The start of day 1 of the PHVA workshop

Getting into the details

Just before the PHVA workshop our field team were busy undertaking a large mammal survey in the Wara Wara hills as part of the USAID funded PAGE programme. It follows on from the support we received from PAGE to deliver our census project and will contribute to the increasing community co-management of protected areas that the programme promotes.

A view of the stunning Wara Wara hills in the NE of Sierra Leone

We’ve also been increasing our community outreach and sensitisation activities; with the support of African Minerals we’re now working with 13 communities to increase their environmental awareness and implement activities that will support protection for wild chimpanzee populations around these communities. We’re extending this pilot work to also include additional communities that we’ve built links with since undertaking the census. Our field outreach team is now benefiting from the support of a new volunteer, Vicky Dauncey, who joined us in July, and they’re making some great progress.

Our conservation sensitisation at work in rural Sierra Leone (Tonkolili)

July also saw us say a sad farewell to Bernie who’d been with us as volunteer since January and through his GIS skills contributed a huge amount to our camera trapping project in the Western Area Peninsula Forest Reserve and even more to the European Union/Welthungerhilfe WAPFoR project that is working hard to protect this crucial natural resource that provides Freetown (our capital city) with its vital water supply. Again we’ll soon provide you with updates on these two important projects.

The summer brought us some great volunteer help from Catherine Jones, Alex Bradbury, Bethan Jones and Cole Benedict who between them saw our resource centre and lots of data entry and photo management brought up date while they were on short term visits to Sierra Leone – thanks to you all for hitting some of those tedious but very important tasks on the head!

Catherine

Alex

Bethan

Cole

During August our Education Officer, Obana Bangura, has been busy preparing our programme for the 2011/12 academic year and thanks to help from Lush and increased collaboration with the WAPFoR project we’ll be working with 16 junior secondary schools that surround the reserve for this year’s environmental education programme. Obana’s preparation received a boost from the PASA (Pan African Sanctuary Alliance) educators workshop that took place in Uganda and the programme for this year is looking very promising. We’re also pleased to have the support of Nick Piggott who’s moved to Freetown with his partner and is sharing some of his free time to help support Obana and our fundraising activities. Last week we had along the children of our staff members for a sanctuary visit and education day so that Obana could practice some of the new activities with them and a fun day was had by all!

Signing the promise wall

A fun learning session

Our increasing work in and outside of the sanctuary brings with it ever increasing administrative requirements. We’re happy to welcome our latest volunteer, Keira McKee, on board to help ease the load!  She’ll be helping with our photography, website and blog as well as keeping the admin at bay.

We’d like to thank you all for your patience while we’ve been offline and we appreciate your continuing support. We’re looking forward to hearing from you as we bring you fully back up to date! For now – here’s another photo of little Perry – wrapped up to keep him warm during the rainy season to make up for the lack of his mother’s body heat he would have normally benefitted from.

Thanks to Lush in Canada we should be able to share lots more photos with you of the wildlife in and around Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary!

.

We received a donation through their Charity Pot scheme which has allowed us to buy some digital camera traps and will also help us to replace our aging supply vehicle. The camera traps will play an important role in helping us to record and confirm wild chimpanzee movements and which other species share their environment. We’re first using the camera traps around Tacugama and in the future we’ll move them further afield to expand our knowledge.

With the help of Joko, our patrol officer, we set up some initial trials with the cameras and we’ve been pleased with the results. Some of the first shots we captured were of Congo – the wild chimp who occasionally visits the sanctuary – together with her two daughters. It’s been very difficult to get images of Congo in the past and it’s great that the traps have done the job for us! Joko’s also very pleased that the cameras should help him with his important patrolling work that protects the forest reserve areas surrounding Tacugama from hunters.

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Thanks to Lush in Canada we should be able to share lots more photos with you of the wildlife in and around Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary!

.

We received a donation through their Charity Pot scheme which has allowed us to buy some digital camera traps and will also help us to replace our aging supply vehicle. The camera traps will play an important role in helping us to record and confirm wild chimpanzee movements and which other species share their environment. We’re first using the camera traps around Tacugama and in the future we’ll move them further afield to expand our knowledge.

With the help of Joko, our patrol officer, we set up some initial trials with the cameras and we’ve been pleased with the results. Some of the first shots we captured were of Congo – the wild chimp who occasionally visits the sanctuary – together with her two daughters. It’s been very difficult to get images of Congo in the past and it’s great that the traps have done the job for us! Joko’s also very pleased that the cameras should help him with his important patrolling work that protects the forest reserve areas surrounding Tacugama from hunters.

Read More »