About the project

BCCP implements an innovative scheme that combines natural forest conservation for chimpanzees with education support for local children. We sponsor the schoolchildren of households who own fragments of natural forest on their land and who are willing to conserve it. This intervention has proven effective at preventing further clearance of local forests, enabling natural regeneration to occur, and encouraging landowners to view natural forest—and the chimpanzees who depend on it—as a valuable resource to protect and maintain for the long term. As of 2025, this initiative supports the children of 75 families who collectively own 280 acres of natural forest, which constitutes critical remaining natural habitat for five chimpanzee communities in the Budongo-Bugoma Corridor (Bulindi, Wagaisa, Kyabasengya, Kihomboza, and Kiraira-Kasunga communities.

Further to the conservation benefits, the programme invests in the education of the next generation of landowners who will ultimately be responsible for maintaining habitat for chimpanzees in the future. 

Additionally, each year, several young women are supported with Gertrude Marsi Scholarships, specifically to enable them to complete their senior education and undertake vocational courses.

Tree growing and planting is one of our core activities—many of the BCCP team are trained foresters and agriculturists. Since 2017, we’ve implemented a large-scale tree planting and alternative livelihoods programme throughout the Budongo-Bugoma Corridor, partnering with several thousand farmers to plant over 7 million trees.  We raise and distribute three kinds of seedlings in our tree nurseries:

• Indigenous forest species for habitat restoration, enrichment and as shade for agroforestry.
• Fast-growing species such as Eucalyptus for woodlots, to provide households with an alternative (non-forest) source of wood for cooking and construction, and income from timber sales.
• High-quality coffee as a ‘chimp-friendly’ cash crop to boost farmer incomes.

With our partners DGB Group, we’re currently implementing an ambitious agroforestry and tree planting carbon project—the Bulindi Agroforestry and Chimpanzee Conservation Project —for farmers across chimpanzee-hosting districts in mid-western Uganda.  This initiative aims to restore degraded farmland, increase tree cover, and enhance biodiversity, including the chimpanzees, while providing sustainable livelihoods for local communities.

BCCP’s ‘Safe Water’ programme is among our most impactful interventions. In western Uganda, women and children are commonly tasked with collecting water for domestic use. Many villagers fetch water from forest streams and swamps, risking exposure to waterborne diseases as well as potentially dangerous encounters with chimpanzees; occasionally, children have been injured by chimpanzees whilst collecting water from the forest. BCCP mitigates this problem by constructing water sources in villages, away from the chimpanzee habitat. Since 2017, the project has overseen the construction of 60 water wells and deep boreholes in villages throughout the Budongo-Bugoma Corridor, bringing safe and clean water to several thousand residents.

In addition to the health and quality of life benefits for villagers, the wells and boreholes help reduce the incidence of negative encounters with the chimpanzees.

Older wells and boreholes inevitably require maintenance and occasional repairs. Luckily, several BCCP staff, headed by Senior Chimp Monitor Vicent Kiiza, are trained to fix the most common well and borehole problems.

Many households depend on locally collected fuelwood for cooking, boiling water and heat, often by harvesting wood from small remaining patches of natural forest that provide critical habitat for chimpanzees. Over the past two decades, forests and wetlands have been degraded to such an extent that even moderate wood extraction for domestic purposes is unsustainable, leading to further depletion of habitat and food sources for chimpanzees.  

BCCP constructs energy-saving cookstoves for local households to help reduce fuel consumption and pressure on the remaining forest. The stoves are made from locally sourced raw materials like termite mound soil for the stove’s body, and sawdust, ash or grass for the insulation. Beneficiaries consistently value the stoves for being efficient (faster cooking time), healthier (less smoke, and safer for children) and needing far less wood than traditional open stoves. Thus, the stoves help reduce people’s need to gather wood from forest patches used by the chimpanzees, while being safer and more efficient to use. 

Farmers who live in daily contact with chimpanzees often complain that the presence of the apes prevents them from improving their livelihoods and hinders their family’s economic development. These problems affect women disproportionately as they are centrally involved in household agriculture, yet often have limited access to funds, education, and business training. 

Currently, BCCP sponsors 10 women’s Village Savings Loan Associations (VSLAs). We support each group with business and microfinance training, seed funds, and weekly supervision to help them manage the loan application and recovery cycle.  Members can apply for soft loans twice yearly to establish small businesses such as shops, salons, poultry and livestock rearing, or farming investments that do not create conflicts with the chimpanzees. The VSLAs are proving effective at enhancing household resilience in ‘hotspot’ villages where local livelihoods are impacted by the presence of chimpanzees.

Conflicts about the chimpanzees often stem from misunderstandings. To address misconceptions and mitigate conflicts, BCCP’s Community Team organises ‘sensitisation’ meetings in villages throughout the Budongo–Bugoma Corridor, often in response to specific complaints or concerns about chimpanzees. At these meetings, we share accurate information about chimpanzee behaviour and explain government laws and policies, as well as the work of conservation organisations like BCCP. The team provides practical recommendations to aid people’s safety and welfare and promote peaceful existence in chimpanzee range areas. 

Each year, we implement an education programme in schools to help foster interest in and understanding about the chimpanzees, and to promote child safety behaviours where children often encounter chimpanzees. The programme includes a variety of classroom lessons and activities—including video showings about chimpanzee behaviour, creative writing and drawing classes, and tree planting exercises—culminating in a popular inter-school ‘chimpanzee quiz’ competition. 

Many local households depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. However, it can be challenging for farmers to grow commercial crops like maize, sugarcane, cocoa, or banana because chimpanzees like to eat these foods. To help address this problem, in 2025, we began a new initiative to help households establish chicken rearing as an alternative livelihood. Interested families living alongside the forest are being supported with materials, veterinary care, supervision and training to establish their own poultry business. 

Football is enormously popular in Uganda, and most villages have local teams. Through sponsoring local teams with kits and balls, and arranging matches and tournaments, our ‘football for conservation’ initiative allows us to engage with young men (typically aged between 15–25 years), who are often involved in forest degradation activities such as charcoal burning, timber cutting and farming in wetlands. Each year, we host a popular—and increasingly prestigious—annual ‘Chimpanzee Football Tournament’ for teams from villages throughout the Budongo–Bugoma Corridor. The tournaments offer an ideal platform to convey messages about the chimpanzees and related environmental issues, helping to reduce misconceptions while also demonstrating to communities that we are invested in them and their youth. 

BCCP also arranges friendly football matches between school teams!