Happy New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year from everyone at Sonso!  The end of last year saw a number of big changes for us: firstly our director Dr. Fred Babweteera was promoted to the post of Conservation Coordinator for African Projects at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland! A big congratulations to Fred and while we’ll all be extremely sad to see him move on from the position of director which he’s taken on for many years – it’s a fantastic opportunity for him and very nice to know that as RZSS are our main funder he’ll still be very much involved in our work in Budongo.

Our chimpanzee friends have been making changes too, with a marked shift in their range down to the far South-East of the forest, well off the existing grid-system (which makes trying to follow them on a day-to-day basis particularly interesting!). The forest quickly becomes a dense, damp, swampy tangle of climbers and roots down there and with little in fruit there seemed no clear motivation for their move – aside of course from watching the foolish bipeds with their soft hairless skin struggle through spiky wet undergrowth with it’s never ending supply of army ants… However, not long after this shift in territory they started to hunt again with regular success. As usual it was the black and white colobus monkeys that were their targets and while the young males were the main hunters, it seemed as though everyone was keen to get their share of the meat. It’s not clear yet whether or not the move represents a permanent shift in their territory (possibly following the pressure from their neighbors to the north), or just one of the regular fluctuations in their range, but we’ll be closely monitoring the situation over the next few months to find out.