Couple’s love for chimps has no boundaries
MEET conservationist Bala Amarasekaran and his wife, Sharmila, the Sierra Leone couple who opened a chimpanzee sanctuary on the outskirts of the capital Freetown more than 26 years ago.
Back then, according to a recent BBC news report, the pair spotted a baby chimpanzee tied to a tree in a village in a rural part of the country. It was for sale.
The chimpanzee was named Bruno. The couple felt that they couldn't just leave the animal there, so they made the big decision to buy him.
Little did the Amarasekarans know that this chance encounter would change their lives forever.
In 1995, the then newly-wed conservationists founded the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located in Sierra Leone's Western Area Peninsula National Park.
“We were newly married and we had this affection seeing this baby chimp, and we thought: ‘OK, we'll bring him home and nurse him.' That's all we thought about,” the couple said in an interview with BBC News.
“But once he came into our lives, I think we got attached.”
According to the sanctuary's official website, it was initially established to enforce wildlife laws and rescue and rehabilitate orphaned chimpanzees.
The sanctuary cares for close to 100 chimpanzees, but is also actively engaged in off-site in community outreach, wildlife field research, environmental sustainability, conservation education and alternative livelihood programmes.
“Once a week, before the babies enjoy the day in their outdoor enclosure, they get a proper bath and some quality time with surrogate mother Mamma P,” the sanctuary recently posted on its Facebook page.
According to the sanctuary, there are an estimated 5500 wild chimps left in Sierra Leone. Tacugama is not only a sanctuary for orphaned chimpanzees. The organisation is active in three of Sierra Leone's four national parks, as well as several non-protected sites, to address the wider underlying problems that are driving chimps to extinction: deforestation, the illegal trade in wildlife and hunting for bushmeat.
One of these reserves, the Loma Mountains National Park, has the highest density of wild chimpanzees in West Africa.
It is estimated that western chimpanzee populations have declined by 80% between 1990 and 2014.
The animals mostly live outside reserves; only about 17 percent of western chimpanzees are found in protected areas.
The sanctuary said habitat loss and illegal bushmeat hunting were driving humans' closest animal relatives to extinction.
The western chimpanzee, Sierra Leone's national animal, is listed as one of the most critically endangered primates in the world.
Despite Tacugama's conservation efforts, orphans continue to arrive on the sanctuary' doorstep.
“So far in 2020 and 2021, the sanctuary has received 18 orphaned baby chimpanzees.”
In 2017, Tacugama was accredited by the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy, a network of forest conservation programmes led by the Royal Commonwealth Society, in partnership with Cool Earth and the Commonwealth Forestry Association.