Chained by the neck to a concrete outhouse for 12 years, it was not much of a life. But given the alternative, Julie was lucky.
Bought for £60 as an infant, this suburban yard in Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital, was the only home she knew.
Slamming her hands on the ground, screaming, the family pet was evidently in distress, but at least she had survived — unlike most great apes in Central Africa.
After being captured with her in the jungle, Julie’s parents almost certainly ended up in a cooking pot as bushmeat, a trade that is driving chimpanzees and gorillas towards extinction.
Young chimps like Julie are more valuable as pets but as they grow strong and wild they can also end up as bushmeat or as prisoners, chained to a wall.
In this case there was a happy ending. Fed up with her angry and out-of-control pet, the owner contacted a wildlife centre at nearby Limbe to take her away.
After being tranquilised and having her chain broken, Julie was lifted into a cage and driven to Limbe to be quarantined for three months and introduced to other chimps that had also been rescued.
Whether she will integrate is uncertain.
”This animal thinks it is a human. She has never seen another chimpanzee,” said Livia Wittiger, a biologist at the centre.
Most great apes in the Congo basin never get that chance. An estimated one to five million tonnes of bushmeat is eaten in the region every year, its value ranging from £10-million to £100-million in different countries.
In the past decade, the number of eastern lowland gorillas has plunged from 17 000 to 5 000, according to Conservation International.
Western chimpanzees have disappeared from Benin, Gambia and Togo, and fewer than 1 000 remain in Senegal, Ghana and Guinea-Bissau.
The United Nations environmental agency has warned that we are destroying a bridge to our origins — humans share more than 96% of their DNA with great apes.
Hunting and eating great apes has been illegal for a decade, but it is only recently that the trade went underground, partly because since last year any restaurant owner caught serving meat from endangered animals faces up to three years in prison and a $16 000 fine.
”We know it is still being sold. Gorilla meat sells for five times the price of beef, so there is an incentive,” said Marius Talla Tene, of the Last Great Apes organisation.
The Observer newspaper accompanied him to Nkoldongo market in Yaounde, the capital, where porcupine and other legal bushmeat were on display. Angry traders ordered him out when he tried to inspect stalls.
”People threaten to kill us,” he said.
Most hunters are impoverished villagers who use the income to buy essentials such as salt, fuel and medicine. The carcasses are brought to an informal depot in the jungle and then driven to cities. Logging trucks have been repeatedly implicated in such transports but traders also use ordinary cars, said Tene.
”Restaurants and rich people know where to buy the meat. Sometimes they commission hunters, but often they just go shopping.”
Chimp and gorilla meat has been found in Europe but is usually consumed in Central and West Africa.
Babies have been sold as pets, but nine out of 10 die from disease and neglect, said Felix Lankester, of the Limbe Wildlife Centre.
As awareness of the problem grows, more of those pets that survive will be rescued.
”It’s not too late, but there is not a lot of hope left for the great apes. They are spiralling into extinction.” — Guardian Unlimited Â