For all our prehistory and history, we clashed and fighted with other species. Sometimes they fight back: David Quammen reports on National Geographic of an ongoing and bloody conflict with chimps in rural Uganda. The details are gruesome, but it’s us who started:
The main driver of the conflicts, it seems, is habitat loss for chimps throughout areas of western Uganda, forested lands outside of national parks and reserves, which have been converted to agriculture as the population has grown. The native forest that once covered these hillsides is now largely gone, much of it cut during recent decades for timber and firewood, and cleared to plant crops.
It is a cautionary and worrying tale. The more we occupy habitats and resources of other species, the more we risk direct conflict with them -and so, the more these species will be further jeopardized. Climate change for example will probably add further competition with the rest of the biosphere, humans and non-humans clinging to land and water. Bleak times are ahead.