"Landmines in the forest: Assessing and mitigating the threats of snares to wild chimpanzee conservation in Uganda 

Uganda’s Kibale National Park is home to one of the largest populations of eastern chimpanzees. Historically, high poaching rates in the park have produced equally high snare injury rates in chimpanzees and other wildlife – approximately one-third of Ugandan chimpanzees have permanent snare injuries. Snares threaten the integrity of a chimpanzee’s daily life and health as well as their conservation as a species. Since 1987, the Kibale Chimpanzee Project (KCP) has been working in the Kanyawara region of the park to expand our knowledge of chimpanzee behavioral ecology while also implementing and maintaining many successful conservation initiatives that focus on this threat. Since 1997, our Kibale Snare Removal Program (KSRP) has deployed more than 5000 patrols and removed over 10,000 snares throughout the park, leading to a reduced rate of snare-setting in the Kanyawara home range and therefore a decline in the frequency of snare-related chimpanzee injuries. To complement this effort, in January 2020, we established the Chimpanzee Health, Intervention, and Monitoring Program (CHIMP), which is managed by an onsite Ugandan wildlife veterinarian. CHIMP adopts a One-Health approach to 1) improve chimpanzee health monitoring, 2) mitigate (anthropo)zoonotic disease transmission, 3) elevate veterinary emergency response to disease outbreaks and snare injuries, and 4) engage local communities in public awareness campaigns relating to chimp conservation. While CHIMP is still in its infancy, its establishment has been extraordinarily timely given the additional COVID-19 pandemic conservation challenges. All of our conservation efforts are in collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the Jane Goodall Institute."