AS WE CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL PRIMATE DAY, DR CHERYL MVULA MBE, BORN FREE’S SPECIAL ADVISOR AND SENIOR TECHNICAL ADVISOR AT ZAMBIA PRIMATE PROJECT, LOOKS BACK AT SOME OF ZPP’S SUCCESS STORIES 

As we celebrate International Primate Day, I’ve been reminiscing about all of the baboons and monkeys we have rescued and put back to the wild since we set up Zambia Primate Project with the help of Born Free in 2002. It’s almost 650 primates now – imagine! And each and every one has their own personal story to tell.  

Doreen, a yellow baboon, was rescued from the end of a short chain in a policeman’s garden in Lusaka. We found her clutching a tiny kitten to her chest for companionship. She had been used by the policeman for years to promote his part-time driving school business. He used to tie her to the steering wheel of his car and ride around the neighbourhood with Doreen sitting on the roof. She was so humanised and broken that she wasn’t accepted by the other baboons we had rescued. For her own safety she had to be kept in a night room on her own, as the others bullied her relentlessly. Her chances of a release back to the wild as part of a social troop looked slim. 

Fast forward a year and we had secured the approval to re-home Doreen to the Luangwa Valley and hatched a plan for her to live a free-ranging life under the 24/7 care of Chipembele Wildlife Trust. It was the next best thing to the wild – or so we thought. Doreen of course had other plans! 

As has often been my experience working with rescued primates, this adult yellow baboon surprised us all and over the next six months she slowly but surely integrated herself into the wild troop that occasionally travelled past her new bush home. At first she began to go off with them for the day, returning at night to sleep on the roof of the house. Then gradually she stayed away with her new family for longer and longer until she left home completely! She lived out the rest of her life in the wild – free and making her own choices. A far cry from where we found her on the end of a chain.

Then there was John who we rescued from a village in the Copperbelt, a hot-spot area for the trade in bush meat and illegal primate ownership. We found him dressed in urine-soaked shorts and chained up to a derelict house, being harassed by village dogs. After a period of rehabilitation, we released John back to the bush in Kafue as part of one of our annual soft releases. We supported John and his baboons’ transition back to the wild over the next year and the troop quickly settled into their new life of freedom. 

The best part of our work is seeing primates like John and Doreen, knowing the dire conditions they have been rescued from, living the life they were always intended to live – climbing trees, playing, grooming others of their own kind and being groomed, foraging for wild foods and making their own choices on where to travel and sleep each day. A free life.
We are looking forward to our next release of 36 rescued vervet monkeys in Kafue National Park at the end of September – lives about to be transformed after years on the end of short chains. We simply can’t wait. It’s what we live to see!

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Doreen: integrated into a wild troop

John: Back to the wild