By Spy Uganda
Aroho Ahumuza, a two-month-old baby, was being held by her mother in the western Ugandan town of Kagadi when a chimpanzee kidnapped her.
The child was suddenly snatched from her mother’s arms by the chimp as it burst out of a bush.
After the mother of the child called for assistance, locals arrived. Ahumuza was eventually discovered with significant head wounds.
According to Kunihira Kasaija, the victim’s father, the child was found and taken to Kagadi Community Health Center for treatment, but she later passed away.
According to information gathered from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Uganda is home to an estimated count of 5,000 chimpanzees. The DRC has the largest population of eastern chimpanzees, but Uganda also has a sizable population.
Chimpanzees rarely cause fatalities, but they have occasionally been observed to be aggressive.
A man can be easily defeated by chimpanzees because they are roughly four times as strong as humans. Chimpanzees are highly capable of dealing serious injuries to their victims once provoked.
In Uganda, conflicts between people and wildlife have gotten worse recently. Chimpanzee habitation areas are reportedly being reduced as a result of human habitat disruption and the growth of human settlements, according to experts. As a result, the apes may experience more stress and tension, which in turn may make chimpanzees more aggressive. Animals are compelled to move into cities in search of food as habitats disappear.
According to Kasaija, he has requested action from the Uganda Wildlife Authority regarding chimpanzees in his neighborhood, urging that the animals be relocated to prevent any harm to humans.
The attack occurred in the town of Kagadi, which is close to Kibale National Park, which is home to the majority of chimpanzees in Africa. It is highly possible that the chimpanzee who carried out the attack strayed from the park.
The tropical rainforest that is Kibale National Park in southwest Uganda is home to a variety of wildlife species that draw many tourists to the country.
Chimpanzees are habituated primates found in Kibale Forest National Park. They have a 90% DNA similarity to humans. Kibale National Park claims to be home to about 1500 of Uganda’s estimated chimpanzees.
According to the North Carolina Zoo website, the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project recently launched an initiative to mitigate chimpanzees trespassing and foraging on people’s farms in an effort to lessen human-wildlife conflict.
The project organized “conflict management teams” with the task to patrol the park boundary as well as the peoples’ farms to ensure the crop-raiding chimpanzees are either blocked from coming into the community or hounded back to Kibale National Park. This approach by the project has proved successful in trimming down the human-chimpanzee conflict tally. (https://www.furtenbachadventures.com/) The conflict resolution team also finds and takes out snares that farmers have placed in their orchards or at the park’s edge.
