BridgIT Water Foundation is committed to safeguarding not only the health and wellbeing of human communities but also the unique wildlife that shares our planet. We love working on the conservation of chimpanzees.
In Uganda's Hoima District, this commitment takes shape through our partnership with the Bulindi Chimpanzee & Community Project, a grassroots initiative addressing the challenges faced by rural communities and wild chimpanzees living side by side - and Suubi Community Projects, a grassroots initiative focusing on providing safe water to communities in need in Uganda.
With approximately 300 chimpanzees surviving in unprotected forest fragments owned by village households, human-chimpanzee interactions are frequent and often fraught with danger. Children, in particular, face risks when collecting water from forest streams, where they encounter these endangered animals. At the same time, water-borne illnesses remain a persistent threat for families dependent on unsafe water sources.
Our project addresses these intertwined challenges by providing safe water access to villagers, reducing their exposure to preventable diseases and mitigating the risk of harmful encounters with chimpanzees. This initiative not only supports human health but also the conservation of chimpanzees, fostering sustainable coexistence between people and wildlife in this remarkable yet fragile ecosystem.
Chimpanzee Conservation Efforts and Water Scarcity in Hoima
Chimpanzee conservation efforts in rural Uganda need to be talked about as the problem is only getting bigger as their habitat gets smaller.
But to understand the problem, we need to delve into why the habitat is getting smaller. The villagers in Hoima live with water scarcity, and limited resources. Many people out of the situation they are in, end up using too much of the forest to help meet the needs of their families. We need to support the human communities to have more resources, and therefore have less reason to cut down trees.
Water scarcity is an issue as well. It is mainly women and children who are tasked with collecting water. People living in Hoima must walk long distances to collect water each day - unless they are fortunate enough to live near one of the small numbers of protected springs or shallow wells in the region.
They often have to fetch water from nearby open water sources such as forest streams, risking exposure to water-borne diseases. These local open water sources such as streams and papyrus swamps - suffer contamination from domestic animal waste as well as wild animal waste, especially from primates including chimpanzees, black and white colobus monkeys, vervet monkeys and baboons, which can carry pathogens transmissible to people. As well as this, water sources can also be contaminated by local and commercial distilling (i.e. crude molasses poured directly into the stream).
Villagers face potentially dangerous encounters with chimpanzees when collecting water from the forest as well. Some local people, especially children, shout and throw stones when they encounter chimpanzees, or they run away - behaviours which can provoke aggressive responses from the chimpanzees.
Understandably, many villagers are afraid of them as adult chimpanzees can be very dangerous. In Hoima, serious attacks by chimpanzees on children have occurred when children were fetching water at forest streams.
In 2017, Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project implemented a 'Safe Water' program, which aims to provide local communities with access to clean, safe water. At the same time, it promotes chimpanzee conservation efforts and reduces potentially dangerous encounters between village residents and wild chimpanzees. Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project works through a collaboration with BridgIT Water Foundation and our Ugandan partner, Suubi Community Projects.
With the help of sponsors, we have provided quite a few villages with new water wells and refurbished some wells too. Altogether the 'Safe Water' program has successfully brought clean, safe water to thousands of village residents who share their daily environment with wild chimpanzees.
The project allows villagers access to a safe water supply without exposure to preventable water-borne diseases such as dysentery, cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea while collecting unsafe, contaminated water from forest streams where they risk potentially dangerous encounters with the chimpanzees.
Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project monitors wild chimpanzee groups in the Hoima District, and implements various community conservation and development initiatives in local villages on top of the safe water, including tree planting, coffee farming, energy stoves, school and child sponsorship, community sensitization and conservation education.
These programs aim to increase people's capacity to accommodate the chimpanzees and engage in environmental conservation through enhancing local livelihoods and helping improve quality of life.
Helping the community gain access to safe water and then income generating strategies takes away the need for the deforestation as the community now have clean water and other income producing strategies. As part of these programs, they are encouraged to work with and protect the chimpanzees in their area.
Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project is a grassroots-level conservation organisation established in 2014 to address urgent threats to an important population of wild chimpanzees living alongside rural farmers in western Uganda's Hoima District.
BridgIT Water Foundation works with Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project through our community development partner in Uganda, Suubi Community Projects.
While chimpanzees themselves are legally protected in Uganda, their habitats often are not. Most of the chimpanzee forest in Hoima is unprotected and owned by local village households. Since the 1990s, most of the natural forest has been logged for timber and cleared for agriculture by local households seeking to improve their livelihoods.
As a result, more than 300 chimpanzees in Hoima have lost their natural habitat. They survive in tiny remnant patches of degraded forest surrounded by expanding agricultural land, villages, schools and roads.
Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project's mission is to identify appropriate mechanisms to effectively conserve Hoima's village chimpanzees, preserve and enrich the remaining natural forest, and promote more harmonious coexistence between chimpanzees and local people.
Because conservation of Hoima's chimpanzees is ultimately in the hands of the local people living alongside them, our approach is to identify and address constraints faced by villagers and offer support in key areas.
Thus, we conserve chimpanzees and forests primarily by helping people. We provide them with alternatives to deforestation, invest in their children's education, support alternative livelihoods, and help to improve their quality of life.
Sponsor a Village
By investing in the wellbeing of local communities, we foster a shared future where conservation and human prosperity go hand in hand. To sponsor a village like this not only changes lives but helps secure the delicate balance between humans and wildlife.
While BridgIT Water Foundation has made significant strides in the Hoima District, installing a number of wells to support both local communities and chimpanzee conservation efforts, our journey is far from over.
Each well is custom-drilled and comes with a substantial cost of about AU$10,000, making these projects a little harder to fund than compared to our more cost-effective initiatives. Despite these challenges, we remain committed to work, as it brings profound benefits to both people and wildlife.
A single well transforms lives. It provides families with safe, sustainable access to clean water, protecting them from water-borne diseases and helping them to go on to focus on other income generating strategies, becoming the first step out of poverty.
These wells are a lasting solution, enabling people and chimpanzees to coexist in harmony, meeting the needs of both.
We don't get to do these projects as often as we would like, however we wanted to highlight the work we have done in Uganda for the conservation of chimpanzees in the past years.
If you feel inspired to make a difference, consider if you would like to sponsor a village well. Together, we can ensure that the people and chimpanzees of Hoima District continue to thrive side by side.
Follow the Shout. link below to give to this cause.
Σχόλια