Baby Astra: The chimpanzee born from failed birth control

At Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary on Ol Pejeta Ranch in Laikipia County, the air is still. A few minutes to mid-day, the 30 chimpanzees that live here call their friends to eat. Among them is baby Astra, the sanctuary’s youngest chimpanzee aged one year and five months. His delivery in 2022 is believed by experts at the sanctuary to have resulted from a failed family planning procedure.

About a year before he was born, the sanctuary had placed contraceptive implants— the same kind that people use to prevent pregnancy— in sexually mature females and conducted vasectomies in mature males to prevent breeding.

Dr Florence Muthoni, the sanctuary’s resident chimpanzee vet, explains that the sanctuary does not breed chimpanzees in obedience to a regulation from Pan Africa Sanctuary Alliance, a regulatory body that governs most sanctuaries in Africa. According to the alliance, rescued chimps in a sanctuary should not be bred due to constrained resources and to avoid creating hybrids.

“We do this because of resources. You do not want to do overbreeding in an area where the chimpanzees are not endemic. This is not their natural habitat. Because there are three sub-species here, you also do not want to create hybrids. Besides, the more you interbreed, the more you create genetic defects,” explains Dr Muthoni.

“Sometimes, just like in humans, our implants fail and the result is that we have a baby. We are taking care of the baby and the mother. The baby is currently weaned off breastfeeding, and we keep him on a healthy diet for optimum growth,” she adds.

The American Association of Zoo Veterinarians advises that while considering contraceptive options, reversibility and safety as well as potential weight gain must be considered when offering hormonal methods. The association notes that implants such as MGA implants and Norplants work by interfering with fertilisation by thickening cervical mucus, interrupting sperm transport and disrupting implantation. It adds that 29 per cent of the female chimpanzees who have utilised solid MGA implants have experienced a four per cent failure rate.

However, it is unclear whether the birth control failure at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary resulted from loss of the product or loss in implant efficacy. The association, however, recommends that the implants are routinely checked to ensure they are in place by palpation during training or scanning a transponder microchip placed within the implant.

Even though baby Astra will live his life in a safe environment socialising and playing, his parents and group mates did not have a peaceful start to life. Most of them are survivors of smuggling, bush meat trade, habitat loss from commercial logging and illegal wildlife trade.

Intended to be pets, some were chained up all day while others were confined to tiny cages in various countries. As a result, they lacked muscle development to climb and walk properly. Others were handed over by their owners for lifelong safekeeping after they grew big and uncontrollable. Chimpanzees kept as pets often suffer from both psychological and physical wounds. They frequently adopt unnatural behaviours in captivity such as begging for food by clapping their hands, spitting on people, or pacing due to boredom.

Many of these chimpanzees at the sanctuary still bear scars from encounters with bullets or snares.

Constrained to live in artificial environments, they endure trauma, leading to aggression, depression, or even psychosis.

There are other apes that are often captured in the wild and smuggled to distant locations to serve as entertainment in commercial zoos and safari parks. Their fate, upon ageing, mirrors that of pet chimpanzees.

“This sanctuary started in 1993 through an agreement with Jane Goodall Institute and the Kenya Wildlife Service. The main goal was to rescue chimps who were victims of the civil unrest in Burundi. Other than that, we have chimps that were rescued from smugglers. Some were rescued at JKIA on transit, and a few people have surrendered chimps to us for their life-long care from Iran, Iraq and other countries,” explains Dr Muthoni.

In 1995, another group of nine adult chimpanzees joined the sanctuary, followed by an additional 10 in 1996. Over time, the sanctuary's scope expanded, now accepting chimpanzees rescued from distressing circumstances worldwide. Currently, it protects 30 chimpanzees.

“Immediately they get here, we have a quarantine facility where they stay for three months. We conduct tests, vaccinate them, and try to understand their personality and trauma patterns, which may range from food traumas, where they tend to binge eat, or loud sounds. Caregivers help them address their trauma, and then they are slowly introduced to a group. That also involves a lot of research to know which group they would better fit in and if there is a surrogate mother who can take them in, depending on age and gender.

“Being in a semi-captive facility, they are quite intelligent animals and you have to keep them engaged — keep them doing things they would be naturally doing in the wild such as foraging termite mounds, digging for termites, using sticks, swinging from trees, among others. This can take like a year or two,” she adds. 

Every morning, Ms Muthoni and her team leave their campsites and go to the chimpanzee nighttime holding facilities to check on them and ensure they have woken up well. The team then releases them for breakfast and clean their sleeping facilities. The chimps are released into their enclosures, where they spend the rest of their day browsing.

“They come back for lunch at around noon, and then go back again. In the evening, they go back to the holding facility for the night. Chimps in the wild are almost omnivorous like us. They eat meat, fruits and plants. Here, we do mainly fruits and non-meat-based proteins. We also mix eggs with some of their foods, but other than that they eat fruits, vegetables and peanuts. We have also set up termite mounts so they can dig for termites outside.”

Besides serving as a rescue centre, the sanctuary also serves as a platform for raising awareness about chimpanzees in their natural habitats. Unfortunately , the chimps in the sanctuary cannot be reintroduced to the wild. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora has declared wild chimpanzees as threatened and endangered, and in need of utmost protection. This declaration means that it is illegal for chimpanzees to be used for entertainment, to be captured, killed or traded commercially.

Despite efforts to protect them, thousands of great apes vanish from their natural habitats annually due to illegal trade. Conservatively, experts believe that a minimum of 2,000 chimps fall victim to trafficking each year. Shockingly, for every live baby chimp caught up in illegal trade, up to 10 other chimpanzees may have perished in the process.

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