Budongo Forest

The area, situated between 1° 37 N - 2° 03 N and 31° 22 - 31° 46 E, is 435 km² in extent and is composed mainly of moist, medium-altitude, semi-deciduous forest, with patches of savanna and woodland. It covers a gently rolling landscape, sloping down to the East African Rift. Four streams, Waisoke, Sonso, Kamirambwa and Siba, drain the forest and flow into Lake Albert. Annual rainfall in the area is between 1200 and 2200 mm, the rainy season being from March - May and again from September - November, the dry season being December - February.

The nearest town is Masindi, and much of the land around the forest is given over to crops, dwellings and villages, placing continuous pressure on the forest margins, and leading to exploitation for building materials and bushmeat, the snares set by poachers causing mutilation of the chimpanzees and other animals. The mahogany trees that still remain are cut and removed by itinerant pit sawyers.

Recorded from Budongo are more than 360 bird species, some 290 butterflies, 130 moths, 465 trees, and 24 mammals, of which 9 are primates. Chimpanzee tracking has become an activity popular with eco-tourists, necessitating behavioural guidelines for visitors in order to avoid undue disturbance of both animals and forest. Trails have been cut criss-crossing the forest, initially to ease access for research workers and since then used by eco-tourists, forest animals and poachers.

Vernon Reynolds first studied chimpanzees in this forest in 1962 and he eventually founded the Budongo Conservation Field Station.[1] He wrote a book about the forest and its chimpanzees in 1965.[2] Reynolds was one of a trio of pioneer field researchers - the others being Jane Goodall and Adriaan Kortlandt. During the 1970s and 1980s civil war raged in the country, with an accompanying breakdown of law and order. Chimpanzee mothers were shot and the infants taken from the forest and smuggled to collectors in Asia, Europe and America. Reynolds returned to Uganda in 1990 to determine whether a viable population of chimpanzees still existed in Budongo. By 1995 some fifty individuals had been identified, and this figure remained constant until 2000 when the numbers started rising, thought to be due to an influx of chimpanzees from other areas.

The research team renovated and occupied buildings that had been constructed for the Budongo Sawmills Ltd. In 2005 funding for the project was provided by the RZSS at Edinburgh Zoo, as well as a number of other sources. The Budongo Forest Project became a Ugandan NGO and was renamed the Budongo Conservation Field Station.[3][4][5]

Richard Byrne, Cat Hobaiter and colleagues have been based at the Field Station to studying chimpanzee communication in the twenty-first century.[6]

• Central Forest Reserves of Uganda