Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992                   TAG: 9203240207
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEITH B. RICHBURG
DATELINE: ENTEBBE, UGANDA                                LENGTH: Medium

EX-CIRCUS CHIMPS GET HAND AS COMFORTABLE OUTCASTS

If chimpanzees could talk to us, these four primates would surely have a bizarre story to tell. It's about moving from the tree top to the Big Top - and back again.

Their yarn begins in the Ugandan jungle, where all four chimps were snatched separately as babies. They were part of a complex swap for Siberian tigers involving Ugandan government officials and a notorious international animal trafficker. The tigers never made it to Uganda, but by then Jim, Sunday, Meg and Masiko were already on their way to a strange new life in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union.

The story - as well as the chimps' lives - switches to Moscow, 1991. Communism was collapsing around the world, the Baltic states were agitating for independence, and the four chimps were learning to ice skate for the Moscow Circus. They learned figure eights and triple jumps, and became a star attraction in one of the world's most acclaimed circuses.

When the circus hit the road, the skating chimps went along, attracting legions of new fans from the Baltics to Italy to Austria.

As their fame grew, so did an international rescue effort by wildlife officials intent on getting the four chimps back to the wild. It was aided by government officials in Western Europe and the newly democratized East. Officials embarked on a wild, cross-continental chase for the chimps, following the circus caravan from Austria to Hungary. They finally caught up with it, and the chimps, at the Hungarian border as their circus owners were trying to get them back into the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse.

The four chimps were flown back to Uganda late last year.

The roar of the circus crowds is a far cry from the roar of the jungle. The Moscow Four are now in a world they no longer know or understand. Psychologists might call them "behaviorally dysfunctional," meaning they no longer know how to survive on their own in the wild.

At this point in the story comes Christine Manning, a British zoologist and chimp lover who is taking care of a menagerie of confiscated animals at the Entebbe Zoo in Uganda. The label "zoo" is a misnomer: It is more like an orphanage or sanctuary for animals rescued after being illegally taken from the wild.

"Once they've been taken from the wild, it's very difficult to know what to do with them," Manning said. A rescued chimp "won't be accepted by another group since it's not a group member."

One solution the zoo supporters see is to build an island sanctuary for the Moscow Four and 14 other rescued chimps at the zoo. In the beginning, the chimps would require human assistance - "a halfway house on the island," as Manning put it - until they learned how to live on their own in a jungle environment.

The Jane Goodall Institute, which researches primates, has been pushing the sanctuary idea. Linda Rothen, its representative in Kampala, has an ambitious idea for an island chimp habitat that could emerge as a major tourist attraction, with feeding platforms on the periphery to give the public a close-up view. The project would have to be self-supporting.

There are similar chimp rehabilitation sites on an island off Liberia, in Gambia and in Britain.

The story of the Moscow Four points to what wildlife officials say is an alarming if little-publicized problem: illegal international animal trafficking. Although most wild-animal trading is prohibited under terms of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, it is still big business.

It is difficult to get firm amounts, but the animal trade is believed to involve hundreds of millions of dollars. A Ugandan court recently heard that a single chimp was worth about $15,000 on the black market, although some wildlife officials said they often go for four times that amount. In addition to chimps, the trade involves exotic birds, sea turtles and leopards.

Chimps are especially popular because as babies they are easily trained. "They're as responsive as children," Manning said. "They learn by imitation."

Today, Jim, Sunday, Meg and Masiko spend their days playing on bamboo, rope and tires, sleeping on their backs in the sun and mugging for camera-toting visitors.

"Physically, they are in good condition," Manning said. "But these are obviously chimps that didn't get a lot of exercise."