Copyright 2001 WASHINGTON POST
August 30, 2001
By Douglas Farah

TACUGAMA CHIMPANZEE SANCTUARY, Sierra Leone - Pinky is an exotic beauty, flirtatious and playful. Bruno likes to hurl stones at strangers who venture too close to his territory. And Little, traumatized by Sierra Leone's civil war, rocks on his heels, alone, picking at his hair.

The three are among the lucky few orphaned and abused chimpanzees who have survived poachers, animal trappers, and 10 years of warfare, thanks to a small group of people who, at personal risk and with only a shoestring budget, have kept this country's only chimpanzee sanctuary going.

"I didn't know anything about chimps when I started," said Bala Amarasekaran, a Sri Lankan who founded and directs the sanctuary, which sits on a hillside rain forest 10 miles from the capital, Freetown. "But the more I am around them, the more I realize how close they are to us. They are so intelligent - that is what fascinates me. You never get tired of being with them."

The sanctuary is home to 43 chimpanzees, including Pinky, the only known albino chimp in existence. They respond to their names when called and romp either in their cages or in the forest.

Sierra Leone had an estimated 20,000 wild chimpanzees in the mid-1970s, but experts say fewer than one-tenth of that number survive. The animals have been hunted for meat, tracked for capture and sale, and seen their natural habitat devastated by war and human encroachment. Even those in the sanctuary were hardly spared such troubles.

In May 1997, rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), along with renegade army units, marched on Freetown, infiltrating the capital on footpaths that cut through the reserve, burning villages and killing civilians along the way.

Amarasekaran was evacuated along with foreign-aid and embassy workers. The rebels marched through the sanctuary, looting the chimps' food and smashing computers but sparing the animals.

The reserve's local staff and people in surrounding communities risked their lives for several months to scrounge in the forest for food for the chimps and deliver it as the war raged. Amarasekaran returned in November 1997, and the rebels were driven from Freetown shortly afterward.

Later, Amarasekaran said, he ran into a soldier who had raided the sanctuary and asked him why the chimps were not killed. "He said, 'The chimps were not on our agenda,' " Amarasekaran said, shaking his head.

The rebels attacked the capital again in 1999, killing and maiming thousands of people. This time, workers at the chimp reserve and civil defense forces from nearby villages took up arms to defend themselves and the 22 chimps there at the time, Amarasekaran said. Despite heavy fighting, the animals again escaped slaughter. Amarasekaran stayed, fearing his staff would be killed if there were no foreigner there to offer them protection.

"The RUF did not kill any chimps, but several died because with the RUF here we could not get medicine and proper food for them," Amarasekaran said.

Because of the war, the sanctuary received little publicity, few visitors, and only occasional financing. Now the war is winding down, Freetown bustles with aid workers and thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, and the chimps receive a steady stream of visitors as word of the reserve has spread.

"It was hard to ask for money for chimpanzees when there is so much human suffering here," Amarasekaran said as he played with some of the chimps in cages and walked through the forest to check on others. "Now, as things settle down, doing this doesn't seem so crazy to people."

Despite the sanctuary's relative obscurity, Amarasekaran and his staff of six have gotten the money - from conservation groups, donations, and their own pockets - to enclose 10 acres of forest with an electric fence. There, 25 of the chimps now roam in semi-wild conditions.

Since most chimps that arrive at the sanctuary are captured as babies after their mothers have been killed for meat and are not accustomed to being in the wild or in groups, each new arrival undergoes several months of quarantine to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and then integrates into the larger group over several months.

Eleven chimps, including Pinky, are learning to live with others, spending most of each day in a small, fenced jungle enclosure and the nights in cages, sleeping in small hammocks made from empty rice and wheat sacks. One sleeps in a tire.

Seven recent arrivals are in quarantine and undergoing health screening.

U.S. Ambassador Joseph Melrose and other diplomats are helping to organize fund-raisers and "sponsor a chimp" programs. Amarasekaran is hoping to raise money for a larger enclosure.

"So little of their natural habitat remains," Amarasekaran said. "People still hunt them or catch them because they think the chimps are cute pets. But they are amazing. If you are with them for a long time, you can actually communicate with them. So we rescue the ones we can." Error: Unable to read footer file.