CHIMFUNSHI STORY
By Doug Cress
 At
an age when most people contemplate retirement, David and Sheila Siddle faced an
altogether different dilemma: help a badly wounded chimpanzee or let it die.
The date was October 18, 1983, and the Siddles were well into their second
decade as successful cattle ranchers in central Zambia. They'd raised five
children between them and expanded a tiny fishing camp on a bluff overlooking
the Kafue River into a 10,000-acre farm, yet their penchant for taking in sick
and wounded animals made their house the logical destination one day when a game
ranger confiscated a baby chimp from Zairian smugglers
The chimp, whom the Siddles nicknamed Pal, was suffering from malnutrition,
dehydration and terrible diarrhea, and his back teeth had been smashed in -
presumably to keep him from biting his captors. His mouth was also split wide
open along the left side, a gash that stretched almost up to his ear and left
him bearing a perpetually gruesome leer, and flies buzzed around his open,
infected sores.
"If death has a smell," Sheila Siddle said later, "then that
was it."
But the Siddles nursed Pal back to health, thereby setting in motion a chain
of events that continues to this day. By electing to help a single chimpanzee,
the Siddles' farm suddenly became the repository for dozens of injured and
unwanted chimps from all over the world, forcing them to convert their cattle
ranch into the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage. Over 85 chimps now reside at the
sanctuary - not to mention dozens of other monkeys, parrots, birds, tortoises,
antelope and one house-broken hippopotamus - making Chimfunshi the largest such
refuge in the world.
And there is no let-up in sight.
 "They
just keep coming and coming," said David Siddle, 73, a former contractor.
"Our policy is to never turn away an animal in need, but it's staggering
just how many chimps we get - and how many others we probably never hear
about."
Yet the Siddles' success at saving man's closest relative has won them
international acclaim. The United Nations placed Chimfunshi on its Global 500
Roll of Honor in 1999, the Nedbank / Mail & Guardian Green Trust Awards
awarded the Siddles a special citation that same year for conservation, and
famed primatologist Jane Goodall once called Chimfunshi "the most wonderful
place on earth." This past November, Queen Elizabeth II bestowed MBE awards
upon the Siddles, lauding them for their work.
Sheila Siddle, 70, will release her autobiography, In My Family Tree: A Life
With Chimpanzees (Grove / Atlantic Press) in May, but admits she and her husband
have not done it alone.
"Dave and I just happened to be in the right pace at the right time,
with the right sort of friends backing us," she said. "We're also
lucky to have all the land we need. As long as we can keep finding the money to
carry on rescuing chimps and building enclosures, then we won't stop."
Indeed, a worldwide network of Chimfunshi supporters is what allows the
sanctuary to thrive. The Friends of Chimfunshi includes chapters in South
Africa, Germany, Sweden, and the United States, and raises funds and awareness
on behalf of the sanctuary. Chimfunshi receives no monetary support from the
Zambian government.
It is estimated that 5 million chimpanzees roamed through western and central
Africa at the start of the 20th century, but massive hunting and habitat
destruction have successfully pushed the species to the brink of extinction.
Less than 130,000 chimpanzees are believed to exist in the wild today, and they
have been wiped out entirely in four of the 25 countries where they once
thrived. Chimpanzees are extremely territorial, and approximately 10 die for
every baby that is captured alive; the best estimates are that 4,000 chimps are
killed each year.
At this current rate, experts predict that chimpanzees - like the other great
apes, gorillas and orangutans - will become extinct in the wild by the year
2020.
Chimpanzees are no longer indigenous to Zambia, but Chimfunshi's proximity to
the dense rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo makes the sanctuary a
suitable substitute. Chimfunshi lies just eight miles south of the DRC, and the
heavy rains and broad flood plains of the property give the chimps plenty of
green space.
 Which
is fortunate, since the Siddles' goal is not to keep chimps in cages. By fencing
large tracts of their property with 10-foot electrical wiring - and purchasing
another 15,000 acres from a neighboring farm - the Siddles have made Chimfunshi
the largest area ever set aside for captive primates. There are enclosures of
seven, fourteen and five acres, and two massive 500-acre enclosures that were
opened in April 2000, allowing the chimps to roam through thick forests, fruit
groves, and open grassland.
Yet building areas for the chimps to live has not been as difficult as
finding chimps who can live in them together. Like human beings, chimpanzees are
extremely complex, intelligent and social animals that thrive in large family
groups; in fact, wild chimpanzees often spend their entire lives with their
extended families. But the shattered bodies and minds of the chimps that reach
Chimfunshi take years to heal, and only then can the Siddles begin stitching
together ad-hoc "family" groups - a process of trial and error that is
equal parts observation and luck.
Take, for instance, Milla, an 18-year old female chimp that was brought to
Chimfunshi by Goodall in 1990. Milla had been captured as an infant in the
jungles of Cameroon, but had spent more than a decade as a barroom attraction at
a tourist lodge in Tanzania. She arrived at Chimfunshi with crippling addictions
to alcohol and cigarettes - let alone little or no knowledge of her own species
- yet she has adapted brilliantly, and now serves an elderly matriarch of one
family group.
Then there are Stephan and Louise, who were discovered stuffed inside a shoe
box in hand luggage on a flight to Russia, or Mikey and Grumps, who were
abandoned at the Nairobi Airport and found drifting around the luggage carousel
in a small box. Some chimps have come from as far away as Chile and Haiti and
Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, while others are simply led across the border
from the DRC. Still others are confiscated from dilapidated zoos and circuses.
But no chimp arrives at Chimfunshi without a harrowing tale to tell.
"Some have come in the worst condition imagineable," said David
Siddle. "Just a bag of bones, some of them are. No hair, no real pulse. You
wouldn't even think they were alive."
Yet Chimfunshi is a blue-print for success. Despite expert opinions that
warned chimps from different regions of Africa - let alone those born in
captivity in Europe or Asia - would not get along, the Siddles have re-built
chimpanzee families with staggering success. The fact that the chimpanzees also
choose to reproduce (24 babies have been born at Chimfunshi since 1991) only
cements the family bonds, according to Sheila Siddle.
"In our experience, we have observed a fragmented group of chimpanzees
come together and form a cohesive family after the birth of just one baby,"
she said. "Reproduction somehow restores the social order in a chimp
family. This places us well outside the popular thinking of most animal welfare
groups, and we understand that most chimpanzee sanctuaries use birth control
methods or sterilization, or simply keep males and females apart - mostly
because those sanctuaries are already full up.
"But Dave and I are doing what we believe is right. We have all the
space in the world here, and if our chimps choose to reproduce, then we will let
them. Otherwise, I can't see the point in all this. Otherwise, they'll all just
be sitting around and waiting to die."
Chimps are not the only tenants at Chimfunshi. All manner of wildlife winds
up at the sanctuary, and most of the animals are released back into the forests
on the property when they are healthy enough to fend for themselves. All except
Billy the hippo, that is. Discovered as a 10-day old infant hiding under the
body of her dead mother, Billy was adopted by the Siddles when she was roughly
the size of a small dog. In fact, she was tiny enough to sleep on the living
room sofa and rustle through the house.
Now, however, Billy tips the scales at 1,500 pounds and refuses to believe
she is anything but a pet. She follows Sheila Siddle all over the farm property,
and still squeezes into the living room when she can - yet she reserves her
greatest passion for the chimps themselves, even if they are mostly terrified of
her.
"Billy's desire to be with the chimps is surely driven by her
loneliness," Sheila Siddle said. "It must be terrible to the only one
of your kind. But since she grew up with the chimps and came to know their
noisy, rowdy ways, I guess she finds them a comfort."
But even animals that are one-of-a-kind find a home at Chimfunshi -
especially chimpanzees. Scientists state that chimps possess DNA that is 98.4
percent genetically identical to that of humans, making them more closely
related to human beings than they are gorillas or other primates. Siddle
believes that is important.
"Maybe it's the similarities between chimpanzees and humans that are
important - not the differences," Siddle said. "We really aren't that
far apart. All I know is that these chimps have given Dave and me far more than
we can ever repay."
For more information, please contact: Friends of Chimfunshi at www.chimfunshi.org.za
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