Ups and downs of Cordia season

We had an amazing start to our new habituation project, with the team making great progress and the chimps becoming more used to and more tolerant of the odd people following them through the trees (and swamps) each day. But it’s been a tough few weeks recently, even the well habituated Sonso community have been in stealth mode, flitting elusively through the forest searching for feeding trees. It should be the Cordia season, with the ripe sticky yellow fruits a chimp favourite, but it seems as though after last years bumper crop the trees left little energy for the next season and the fruits have been pretty sparse. At Sonso the chimps can always turn to their perennial favourite Brusinettia (the Paper Mulberry), planted all around our camp during the sawmill days, but the Waibira South group don’t have that luxury and have been leading our team far and wide chasing after calls that disappear quickly off into the distance. There are other challenges cropping up too, as we start to regularly cover more and more of the new grid the sheer scale of the snare and pit-sawing problems in the areas outside of our main research zone become more and more apparent. Diiro and Biruhanni our hardworking trail cutters and snare removers have been taking up to 60 wires out a day, many of them new, and we regularly encounter new illegal pit-sawing sites – almost all of them Cordia trees which are prized for boat building and taken over to the lake-side villages. It may be no coincidence that the Waibira chimps are struggling to find food in Cordia season.

The human pressure on the forest increases with each year and it’s only through keeping an open and honest dialog with local communities that we can try to instigate programs that will ensure the long-term sustainment of the forest both as a conservation area and a valuable part of the local ecosystem which benefits everyone. Our education team is spreading the word in the villages about the expansion of the research zone and the reasons for why we’re removing the snares we come across, and next week a huge mop up operation is planned with both the entire Sonso snare removal team and many of the members of the ex-hunters group to try and make serious impact on the trap numbers in the forest. We’re hopeful that in the long term, as we’ve seen at Sonso, the number of snare injuries will start to drop in the Waibira community. To end on a positive note we thought we’d introduce a few of the boys to you: the size and scale of the new community still astounds us with new large adult males seen on a regular basis we’re now up to at least 15 independent boys in just a few months! To put it in perspective Sonso has at the most 10, many of which are young adult males just starting to establish themselves. We’ve opted for a Scottish-Ugandan theme with most of the boys being given Scottish names and the girls and their children Ugandan ones, so to start us off here are a few new faces:

Douglas: always easy to spot with his impressive set of whiskers

Tallisker: A huge dominant but calm male - our bet for the alpha

Fiddich - a young male who hangs out with the big boys, possibly orphaned but doing just fine - he's nicknamed Chubby for his sizable belly

A stormy week

It’s been an unsettled week in Sonso with the first big storm of the rainy season followed by a day of earthquakes that shook us out of bed at 6am and then, unusually, kept rolling through for most of the day. Not far from the Rift Valley fault line we’re used to the odd rumble here; in a big one we’ll here the chimps calling out with their distinctive waa bark alarms, but they usually settle quickly back down. This time though the repeated tremors kept everyone unsettled, until by the end of the day chimps were alarming left, right and centre, and poor Squibs was seen wandering about in confusion trying to work out where the problem was!

The storm that tore through was also a big one, with wind and hail lashing at the houses all afternoon. The rain that filled our water tanks must have also been a welcome arrival for the dry forest, but it also took out many trees, with a couple of big ones down on our road alone. Tragically one of them must have been the sleeping tree for a group of Black and White Colobus monkeys. Three of them were killed outright when it fell, and another two, including the male, died during the day from their injuries. As they were by the road that goes down to the village we sat with them to keep an eye on them, but it was a sad day as we could do little but wait and then drive them up to camp once it was over. Towards the late afternoon we saw movement in a thick patch of leaves and to our surprise we found a tiny infant hiding inside. We have no idea how he survived, at about 6-months old and only just into his black and white coloration he would still be weaning, so perhaps he was protected by his mother’s body, or maybe he was just light enough to tumble free of the main tree when it came down. He didn’t seem badly injured, just cold and wet and miserable.

It broke our hearts to see him there knowing there was little we could do. While we do sometimes intervene in situations where direct human influence has caused harm (such as snares injuries), big storms, and their consequences, are part of the natural cycle of things. Despite that, we didn’t feel we could just walk away, and Gideon, one of our snare-removal team offered to stay and keep an eye on him until dark. We went back down at first light not really expecting anything other than another sad drive back, but we found him still cold, still wet, but very much alive and much more active. At midday he was resting in the sun drying out, but as they day wore on and he didn’t feed or move away we started to worry again, would he survive another night alone on the ground? In the afternoon we were busy helping our camp vet Caro autopsy the adults, and at 6pm had just jumped in the truck to head down when we saw Gideon walking to camp. We feared the worst, but it was to be a happier ending to the day. That afternoon the infant colobus had climbed back up to the canopy and fed happily on leaves. Later on he came back down, and after one last rest, disappeared into the forest. He’ll still have a lot of challenges ahead: eagles and other predators, and the arrival of a new Colobus male now that there is an open territory and females to claim. But well fed and well rested he has a better chance than we had dared hope for, and Sonso was a more cheerful camp that night for it.

Fire in the forest

The smell of woodsmoke at camp is a familiar friend, dinner is cooked on a wood burning stove and even the water in the oil-drum shower is heated by fire, but it was with a sinking feeling that as the well known smell drifted through the house we heard with it the crack and spit of a large fire.

It started somewhere down in the old sawmill, we don’t know how – a careless spark from the men who come hunting or harvesting rattan cane, or just a piece of glass in the heat of the afternoon sun. At the height of the dry season, with no rain for weeks, the grassland and shrub in the sawmill and camp clearings were tinder dry and too quickly the flames built while we could do little but watch and wait and hope that the natural damp of the main forest would be enough to control its spread while we worked to keep the houses at camp safe.

Nick and Musa walk through the ash and back into the forest

To add to our concern we heard the distinctive alarm calls of our chimps as they approached the area. What would they do? They would certainly have experienced small fires in the forest at the illegal logging camps, and we recently found Musa, the confident adult son of our alpha female Nambi, sitting on a still smoldering log that had been set alight for charcoal. But how would they react to a serious fire in their forest? They came slowly, one by one, clearly nervous, but still apparently curious – we heard the main group of females and families detour around camp and move south away from the area, but the adult males and one or two of the younger subadult females came up to the edge of the flames. And then, to our relief, after checking the area they settled down to feed – the sweet ripe red Brusinettia fruits apparently higher on their list of priorities.

Fortunately the dry grass and brush that had allowed the fire to spread so quickly also helped control its impact – burning so hot and fast that the flames overtook the larger trees before they had time to really catch.  For several days the sun rose through morning mists mixed with the smoke from a few remaining patches of embers, but they are now cold and it’s only the unfamiliar black ash that is kicked up by the chimps as they cross the clearing and blown down through the forest trails.

A softer side to Nick?

Nick, the Sonso alpha male has never been known for his steady or diplomatic nature – he rose to the top as a young powerful male with a definite bent for brawn over brains. The deaths of several of our large males in recent years left the Sonso males in a weakened and vulnerable position which seemed to be associated with a worrying trend of the neighbouring group encroaching ever deeper into Sonso territory. More recently, as the crop of young subadult males (Musa, Kato, Squibs and co.) have developed into strong mature adults, this situation seems to have eased; and Nick in particular seems more comfortable with his position at the top of the hierachy. Still we were surprised to see him revealing a much softer side recently when, following the death of a female chimp in a trap, a young orphaned infant turned up in the group. We suspect that, sadly, the female was the Sonso chimp Sabrina, and that it is her youngest daughter Sharlot that has now been left to fend for herself at only a few years old. The little chimp appears to prefer the company of the big males, and is regularly seen following Squibs and Zalu, but perhaps her most surprising choice of companion though is Nick, who treats her with a gentle tolerance we didn’t know he had in him. Other Sonso chimps have been orphaned at a young age and gone on to survive – Zed and Rachel are two – but both of these had older brothers who cared for them. At the moment we can only wait and see with our fingers crossed if, after her difficult start, she will be one of the lucky individuals who manage to win through to adolescence and beyond. She certainly seems to have started at the top when choosing her new friends!

Richard Odong Too

It is with a profound sadness that we have to announce the death of our friend and collegue Richard Odong Too. Our founder Vernon Reynolds who knew Richard from the earliest days of the project would like to say the following words, which we at camp, and everyone who knew Richard, echo with our most heartfelt sense of grief at his loss.

Obituary for Richard Odong Too

Richard & his son Dennis 1992 (photo A. Lane)

Richard has died. It’s as if the heart had been ripped out of our project. From the earliest days of the Budongo Forest Project he was a star player. He built all the staff houses, kitchens and our lovely shower. He worked with our son Jake and they became lifelong friends. All who came to Sonso camp benefited from Richard’s wonderful, cheerful, lively character. He was totally selfless, going to extreme lengths to help all who knew him. People felt he was their friend. A complete whirlwind of a person. He did so much for each of us and worked indefatigably for the Project. We will all miss him terribly. Camp will never be the same. Now we have to support his family and ensure his children get the education he so wanted for them.

Richard died on April 22nd 2009. He was 40 years old.       Vernon Reynolds

We have received so many wonderful memories, stories and photos of Richard that we would like to share them with everyone, please click here to read more..