Kampala - Ugandan chimpanzee Zakayo, the star attraction at the Uganda Wildlife Education Center (UWEC) near Kampala, is scheduled to cut a cake on Friday as he turns 44. The ageing primate, who will share a birthday drink with well- wishers, was plucked from the wild in western Uganda in 1972 after losing his parents to poachers.
But while Zakayo is living it up in style, thousands of other Ugandan chimpanzees living in the wild are not so lucky, either losing their limbs or lives to poachers traps of seeing their habitats being slowly eroded.
Conservationists are worried that the twin dangers are slowly but steadily leading to the demise of the chimpanzee, man's closest relatives, in Uganda.
"They are threatened with extinction," said Lillian Ajerova, executive director for Ngamba Chimpanzee sanctuary, the East African nation's main home for rescued and abandoned chimpanzees.
"Deforestation is the biggest problem chimps face because this means that their habitat is destroyed," she added.
Conservation groups estimate that there were tens of thousands of chimpanzees in the Ugandan wild before the 1960s. Now just under 5000 remain.
Ecologists say that widespread deforestation in the central and western parts of the country, where the chimpanzee habitats are situated, has led to the displacement of the primates.
Many chimps now find themselves surrounded by villages and gardens in areas where they were once free to roam.
Poaching is almost as big a problem as deforestation.
Poachers lay snares in the bush to trap other game, but the traps have become a danger to the chimpanzees, which fall into them and they either die or lose their limbs, conservationists say.
"The snares are meant for other animals sometimes but the chimps get caught," Ajerova said. "We carried out a survey recently and found that 20 per cent of all Ugandan chimps in the wild have a missing leg, an arm or a foot."
The Ngamba sanctuary, situated on an island on Lake Victoria, was set up 10 years ago to resettle chimpanzees displaced, orphaned or seized from poachers. It houses a total of 44 primates.
