Ronan Donovan Instagram – Text below by @davidquammen from our article in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine @natgeo. This article puts spotlight on a troubling theme across western Uganda where humans and chimpanzees are in competition for resources. ⁣ ⁣ For more than three years after the trauma of her son’s abduction, Ntegeka Semata and her husband, Omuhereza Semata, a farmer, continued to live in their house. They built a bamboo fence around their tiny backyard, enclosing the cooking shed in what they hoped would be a safe zone for the family. “I am scared all the time that other chimpanzees might come back,” Ntegeka said in that earlier interview.⁣ ⁣ But the fence was flimsy, the chimps kept returning, and the Sematas felt under siege. Ntegeka couldn’t work in the garden. The children were sometimes too afraid to eat. Even their goat made piteous noises of fear. By the end of 2017, their house was vacant, with a broken window above the front door. The Sematas had fled and were living a marginalized existence in a rented room at a compound three miles away. They owned no farming land there. “I feel like we’ve been cast back into poverty,” she said.⁣ Meanwhile the remaining windows of their old house reflected only the faces of chimpanzees, which visited regularly, glowering in, confused and provoked by the chimp images mirrored there, which seemed to be glowering out.⁣ ⁣ Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps ⁣⁣ .⁣⁣ .⁣⁣⁣⁣ .⁣⁣⁣⁣ .⁣⁣⁣⁣ .⁣⁣⁣⁣ #chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo⁣⁣⁣