Call for Ugandans to stop eating Chimps (November 23 2012) Call for Ugandans to stop eating Chimps (November 23 2012)

Lilly Ajarova the Ugandan Executive Director of the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary providing food, veterinary care, facilities for rehabilitation for orphaned rescued chimpanzees, within a rainforest habitat of 100 acres. Once the individuals have been rehabilitated they are integrated into the main chimpanzee group and live as part of a community, as they would in the wild. Henry Wasswa in an IPS News article titled ‘Conservationists Call for Ugandans to Stop Eating Chimps’ states “Conservationists struggling to protect the remaining population of Ugandan chimpanzees have raised concerns that people around wildlife reserves in the west of the country have taken to eating the primates. “There is now an issue of eating bush meat. We did not think Ugandans were eating primate meat but we are starting to observe that monkeys and chimps are being eaten. This is scary. The threat to their survival has been growing bigger,” according to Lily Ajarova …The sanctuary, which houses 48 primates rescued from human captivity, was set up with the help of the Jane Goodall Institute and is managed by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust. …Currently there are only an estimated 5,000 chimpanzees in Uganda …conservationists had first noticed people eating primate meat in western Uganda two years ago, those engaging in the practice had mostly been immigrants or refugees from neighbouring DRC. It was rare for locals in this East African nation to eat primate meat, she said. “There are many other parts of the world where primate meat is eaten but this had not been happening in Uganda. We began witnessing this over time. It has been developing slowly and we ourselves only got wind of it when we were in the field two years ago”

 

Inspired by Henry Wasswa ow.ly/fmUfo image source Bornfree ow.ly/fmUdL