Chimps pay price of human expansion

They have their hands full at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, where record numbers of orphaned chimps are being delivered to their care, victims of the relentless expansion of human activity.

Poachers hunt them for their meat, farmers shoot them to protect their crops and a lack of political will means more and more of their habitat is being surrendered to urban development and forestry.

Founder of the sanctuary Bala Amarasekaran does not mince his words.

“Over the past 10 years, the environment has suffered much depletion as a result of widespread construction of houses, logging and mining with the approval of corrupt politicians and lands ministry officials,” he said.

Several species of wildlife around the forest, he added, had been wiped out.

The chimps’ plight echoes the core message of the WWF’s new Living Planet report, released Tuesday: that the devastation of the planet’s wildlife is mostly down to “runaway human consumption”. Over the past three months, the Sierra Leone sanctuary has received seven orphaned chimps, a record number. But those figures only hint at the true of the said Amarasekaran.

They calculated that for every chimp they received, up to 10 others could have been killed. Over the past three or four months then, between 70 and 100 chimpanzees could have perished.

“Most chimps that arrive at the sanctuary are less than five years old and would still be suckling milk from their mothers,” said Mama Posseh Kamara, who acts as surrogate mother to the new arrivals at the sanctuary.

“Many have lost their mothers to bush meat scale slaughter, Mr hunters, abandoned or illegally sold as pets,” she explained.

As she spoke, she fed milk to one of her new charges, a four- month- old baby chimp, as several others climbed over her back and head.

“I have been doing this job for the past 14 years,” she said. “They usually see me as their mother because I feed and clean them daily. Sometimes they even cry for me.”

While they do what they can to protect the animals’ habitat, their efforts are often frustrated by the actions of local officials, said Mr Amarasekaran.