Hope Is A Verb - Bala Amarasekaran- The accidental conservationist

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Meet Bala Amarasekaran, an accountant turned conservationist who founded the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone and empowered local communities to play their part in protecting native forests and wildlife. In this conversation, Bala shares his extraordinary story about how a chance encounter with a baby Chimpanzee led to an epic conservation mission that’s spanned more than three decades, saved countless chimps and connected him with the legendary Dr Jane Goodall. This episode is a masterclass in what it takes to show up and answer a call to mend the planet- even if it’s not the path you planned for.  Find Out More:  Website:  www.tacugama.com Instagram: @tacugama Facebook: www.facebook.com/Tacugama This episode of Hope Is A Verb was hosted by Angus Hervey, cofounder of Future Crunch and Amy Davoren-Rose, creative director.  The soundtrack for this podcast is "Rain" composed and performed by ⁠⁠El Rey Miel ⁠⁠from their upcoming album "Sea the Sky." Audio Sweetening by Anthony Badolato- ⁠⁠Ai3 Audio and Voice⁠⁠. We would like to acknowledge that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Warring People. These conversations are inspired by our charity partners and our Humankind Project that celebrates the people who are stitching our world back together. You can contact us at: [e-mail] Transcripts will be available on our website soon.   

Hi, welcome to Hope is a Verb, a podcast from Future Crunch that explores what it takes to change the world through conversations with the people that are making it happen. I'm Amy. I'm Gus, and these are the unknown heroes who are mending our planet, stitching together a better future, and showing us the best of what it is to be human. He changed me totally. When you rescued him, he was just a monkey.

But when you come with him home, the way he is, the way he behaves, the way he shows his affection towards you, it's something different. I mean, it can happen to anyone. So I cannot be really boast about, I looked after a chimp and built a sanctuary. It could have happened to other people too, because chimpanzees can take you down that lane. There's no job description for changing the world because sometimes the greatest feats are accomplished by the least likely of applicants. Take Bala Amorescaran, an accountant who traded numbers for accountability when he stepped up to create Takaguma, a chimpanzee sanctuary in Sierra Leone.

With no prior conservation experience, but a fierce determination, Bala has worked tirelessly for almost three decades to save the endangered Western chimpanzee and to inspire better ways for communities to protect wildlife and their habitat. We couldn't think of a better way to close this first season of the podcast than with this inspiring story of the accidental conservationist. Bala, welcome to Hope is a Verb. It's great to have you on the podcast.

I'm happy to join you. Is there a news story anywhere in the world that is giving you hope right now? I think I should look within. I think we have lots of new stories within Sierra Leone and that's what inspires me and keeps me going. The work we do is conservation. The old thoughts of institutions and government trying to protect larger areas like national parks, I think is not working so well in Africa.

So I think we are heading towards giving ownership to communities and for them to protect their own forest and community forest and also helping to protect the national park. It's a wonderful way of looking at people taking back ownership of some of these things and they really understand the environmental issues, the climate change issues, and to see how they can take care of their own problems. So that's something very good in the last years, working with communities and strengthening them.

And that's obviously quite a big shift, I imagine, especially given where things were maybe 20 or 30 years ago. Do you have any idea why that might be the case or what's been behind that change? I think we live in a landscape sometimes because of poverty and many other problems. I think conservation is not given priority. I think people focus so much on development, it's fine,

but it's not happening in a way it is sustainably done. There are not enough budgets committed towards environmental protection and some people at the top probably want to see changes, but not necessarily it's happening down the line so it comes to a point maybe make people feel it's ours we need to protect ours otherwise it's like us and them so i think good for people to feel it's our duty to protect what is around us i think that's probably the shift shift and for us it's not today we started this project I've been on this thing for nearly three decades

now, it's 30 years of work and in that time you realize that you need to make some drastic changes in terms of how you look at it, otherwise I don't think I've got another 30 years so you've got to change that at some point. Bala, we can obviously

hear that talking about protecting what's around you, we can hear the chimps in the background. Can you tell us a little bit more about where you are right now, the Takagama Sanctuary and the Western chimpanzees you call it home? We read that they're the only critically endangered chimp subspecies. They are. According to the International Union for Conservation and Nature, in 2016 they declared the Western chimpanzee

the highly threatened and endangered species. So when a UCN declares something like that, it's telling you that we may lose this species during our time, not even our children's time. So that's why they are critically endangered. Takugama is a halfway house. Chimpanzees arrive here in all sorts of conditions. Sometimes they come with physical trauma.

At the same time, also a lot of mental trauma because most of the time the capturing takes place in a way the mother is killed or a group is wiped out and a couple of infants are caught. So they come with a lot of mental scars and you need time for them to rest and settle into the sanctuary. Normally they come from a small cage or on a chain, but when they come here, they're given larger spaces and they get to meet other orphan

chimpanzees and they become a family. They become a family group. And so the sanctuary is taking care of them, although our program in terms of complete release, like reintroduction program, hasn't happened. It's simply because we are still facing a lot of issues outside. So you cannot be reintroducing chimps when we are still taking in chimps. That means wherever they are, it's not very safe. So what we have decided is for the time being, the chimpanzees of Takugama will serve as ambassadors for the wild chimpanzees that are roaming around the whole country. We have in our last survey and census about 5,000,

500 to 6,000 chimps in the country. And these 120 chimps at Takugama are like ambassadors. So here they heal and they get bonded to each other. We develop them into small family groups and we have seven distinct groups here. These 120 chimpanzees are living in different groups. We have large enclosures. But the thing is, we are in the rainforest. We are within the national park. So when you watch from the outside, it will look like they're actually living in a forest. This work has completely shaped your life. And what makes it so incredible is that chimpanzee conservation was never part of your original plan. But before we dive into how you got here, I'd love for you to take us back to the beginning

of your story, because you were born in Sri Lanka. So how did your family end up in Sierra Leone? I come from the north of Sri Lanka. So there was a lot of misplanting going on at that point. A lot of kids were leaving school because the climate was not such. My mother was a teacher. My father was an accountant. They were thinking,

is it a very good environment for us to grow up? There was a civil strife slowly beginning, especially we had issues all the time. There was some riots and schools were closed down. At that time, Sierra Leone and some other African countries were looking for teachers, so they wanted people to come. And my mother came first. So when she came here, then of course, the part of the package is also the kids get some benefit, like get an air ticket and get some study allowance and things like that. So she thought we could join her. And

that's what happened, basically. Were you the type of child who was interested in nature? Was there a seed planted in your childhood for the work you do now? I would say probably thanks to our parents, they always encouraged to have pets at home. So we always grew up with dogs and cats and goats because north of Sri Lanka, I come from Jaffna, and I have a lot of relatives living in the outskirts. So they have like these beautiful paddy fields and they've got cows.

And we didn't go to a supermarket to buy milk in a packet. Basically, they go to the backyard and take it from the cow or the goat. So I think probably there is these things you grow up with them. So it's in there. I never came to Sierra Leone to save chimps, but possibly that was hidden somewhere deep down. Probably the seed was planted in terms of being passionate and being sympathetic and show that affinity to other beings,

not just humans. Bala, can you talk us through that huge turning point in your life? Because when you met your first chimp, Bruno, you were working as an accountant? Yes, it was not a planned journey. I mean, there is an autobiography being written. I told the guy, maybe you need to start the storyline as it all started with my father-in-law's hernia.

As all good stories do. Yeah, exactly. What happened was my father-in-law fell ill and he had a hernia and there was not good government hospital to take care of him. So they suggested there is a mission, a Catholic mission hospital about 80 miles from here. He needs to be hospitalized and he needs to stay there for a couple of days. So we wanted to kill some time.

So we decided to drive around on the outskirts. And that is how people talked about monkeys and chimps and this and that. So I told them, well, I've never come across a chimp because my work is different. I was not looking for monkeys and chimps. And because of the workload, haven't traveled a lot at that time within the country. Then one guy said, well, I know a village where there is a small chimpanzee.

So my wife was with me because she was taking her father to the hospital. And so we both went there. And there you see this tiny little chimp, probably about one year plus, very bad chimp, very dehydrated, a lot of skin issues and things like that. That first day going near the chimp and that hug was something we both felt. So we rescued the chimp. Actually, I didn't even know it was illegal. The guys were claiming they were giving him milk and bananas and kept him alive and they spent money on him. So I actually paid $20. So more or less I bought the chimp.

We felt that if I leave him where I saw him in a village, I thought he would die. And basically the first thing is to save him. The rest, I didn't know that Chip can live up to 50 years. I didn't know that I have to do a lot more. I thought maybe I'm saving a cat or a dog or something. I got to look after him for some time, but I didn't, never even thought it will all become to what it is now. Bala, to rescue a cat or a dog is one thing, but what happened after you brought Bruno home? How did one chimp evolve into a sanctuary? He changed me totally. When you rescued him, he was just a monkey. But when you come with him home, the way he is, the way he

behaves, the way he shows his affection towards you. It's something different. I mean, it can happen to anyone. So I cannot be really boast about, I looked after a chimp and built a sanctuary. It could have happened to other people too, because chimpanzees can take you down that lane. But then Bruno taught me it's not just a chimp. It's about his kind. It's about the species.

So I got more and more dragged into learning more. That is how in my early days, I connected with the famous Dr. Jane Goodall, asking for help, asking for advice. Then obviously, when you start looking at the species rather than the individual, then I came across another chimp held in captivity not too far from my house. So I went to look for this chimp called Julie. Then another chimp, another chimp, and got to a point I was looking after seven chimpanzees at the house. That was crazy. I was not very popular in the neighborhood.

But some people understood that I was stuck with them and I needed to find a solution for them. So that is how I brought this up with the government to say, hey guys, I mean, I'm not cut for this. You people, maybe you have a wildlife department. Why don't you all come together and do something for the chimps? Unfortunately, they could help, but only by providing a piece of land in the forest reserve. And also to say, if you can find the resources

and if you have the ability to take care we will give you the support moral support but not financial support so what do you do i didn't know that this is a lifelong sentence for me i didn't realize i thought okay fine let me help if i'm really really true of what i say that i want to really do something for the chimps as species. That means let me sacrifice an year or two of my life to set up something, then hand it over to the right government and get the right institutions to continue with it. So we decided, OK, fine, let's take a bold step. I left my career and I came to look after chimpanzees. This was in 94, 95. We started the sanctuary.

Then everything started getting worse here. There was a lot of issues between the government and the people and a bunch of people took up arms and there was a rebel movement formed and the country came to a standstill. There was no funding, the banks closed. All those people I hoped for will stay with me and everyone abandoned the post.

So I was left alone. So what next? You get more and more convinced that you've taken up this responsibility. Now it's like your responsibility. We already have like 30 plus chimps here. How do you, what do you do? I mean, you cannot run away from this country with 30 chimps. Where do you go? I have so many questions. I want to pick some of these things

out about what you've spoken about here. It really is an amazing story. You received help along the way, most notably, of course, from Jane Goodall, who it sounds like has been a really huge source of support. You've reached out to people who encourage you. You've had people who've helped you along the way. But it also sounds like you also received, it's almost like a mythic story that you received a call or an invitation to action and you had to face this kind of huge fork in the road decision. Do I step up and accept this call or do I reject it? And of course you've accepted that call. In and amongst all of this, there must've been such a steep learning curve i mean so much of the time you must have been thinking how do i do this how do you keep on going with all of that

as humans from the time we come into this planet we are learning all the time we are learning different things we learn to crawl we learn to walk we learn to go to school. We learn, right? I mean, it's a learning curve. I think such opportunities knock on our doors, yours, mine, but probably only some people are brave to take it. I think that is the issue here. Once you're in it, if you really enjoy it, your work becomes your passion, you will learn. As part of the story, when Jane first met me,

I was actually trying to run away from the problem. I was still not very convinced that I'm going to run a sanctuary. She met me in 93, that is before the sanctuary. And my first request to her was, can you find homes for my chimps? Because I don't think I can look after them for the rest of their life, but I want them to have a good life somewhere. And there was a very good sanctuary in Zambia. It was run by a British couple. It's called Chinfunshi Wildlife Orphanage. And they had chimps. And that time they were building enclosures

and they were taking chimps in. So Jane said, I know these people very well. I can talk to them and probably they will give you hopes. We agreed. Jane went and she kept her word. She spoke to the Seedles in Zambia and they actually processed the import permit to get our chimps to go there. At that time, I only had Bruno and Julie. The rest of the chimps haven't joined us.

But after Jane had gone, I got information about two more chimps kept in captivity in Freetown. So that's the time it kind of dawned on me that, am I really trying to help the situation for chimps? Or am I trying to help the two chimps I have at home? So that was a very big moment for me to truly answer that question. Because there are other chimps, I don't know them, but I know they all have the same traits like Bruma and Julie. So do I want to do that?

Am I prepared to do that? So you convince yourself that's what you need to be doing rather than running away from the problem by asking Jen to send her chimps to another country or to another sanctuary and say goodbye to the problem. That's the problem. I thought I was telling goodbye to a problem without solving the problem. That made me to pick up the call, talk to Jane and told her, Jane, you know what?

Thank you for all the help. Cancel that permit. Let us do something in Sierra Leone. We need more people talking about the welfare of the chimps and their protection. Listening to you speak, it's like hearing a love story. It really is. It's epic.

I'm really interested, what have the chimps taught you? How have they shaped you as a person? Something humans find very difficult is to forgive. That's probably the big one. How do you forgive? Chimpanzees are forgiving. They can have a huge fight and a big commotion, a problem. Within the next one hour hour it's all resolved yesterday

that we had a big quarrel with some of the juveniles i think they are trying to fight for hierarchy you know chimpanzees are always like our politicians always trying to topple the top guy but this morning they all touched it up they had their discussions among themselves okay maybe that was not a good idea this that, that. Everything is done. So this is something I learned to practice. And more than anything is the resilience. That is something I learned, being resilient. Because when you go and rescue a chimpanzee,

you wonder how this chimpanzee survived. You know, he's living, holding on to that last hope that maybe I get help at some point. They don't give up easily. I have practiced that throughout my life with the sanctuary. There were many moments of like, this is it, I'm going to shut down the sanctuary. Or this is it, I'm going to open all the cages. Because during the war, there was bombing here, there was shooting here. You know, some of us carried guns at that time to protect the sanctuary. So we went through some difficult patches and there was no guarantee the next week the sanctuary will be in existence.

What you live with at that point is the hope. So you somehow become very resilient and you feel there is hope and you feel that things will change and you always feel that if you're not there things will be worse so you make sure that you stay focused and see how many people how you can bring more people into thinking like you and how you can make them feel somehow obligated to continue with this work. My guys laugh here that they say, well, I think you like pressure. Well, in a way, it's true. I mean, I go to bed also thinking how it's going to be tomorrow morning if there is no problem for me to solve.

It's going to be a very boring day. It's been a big 30 years and there's been a lot of challenges since you opened the sanctuary. In what ways has the situation for chimpanzees in Africa improved? Has it improved? No, definitely not. It's going the other way. There are small stories, good stories that are happening. But on the whole, according to scientists and conservation NGOs, I think all across Africa, all the chimpanzees, probably the populations have dwindled by somewhere around 75 to 80 percent. If you take West Africa, about four countries have no trace of chimps anymore. So that is a huge blow.

Now, you mentioned that there are some good stories still happening. Now, you mentioned that there are some good stories still happening. Can you tell us what progress has been made in terms of conservation and perhaps the role that Takugama has played? For me, our brand ourselves, Takugama, has more than a sanctuary. We are not a sanctuary sitting down just receiving chips. We have evolved tremendously over the years. So now we are managing two of our national parks together with the government. So we bring in technical expertise and research

and trying to attract more resources, funding organizations to protect the national parks. And luckily, these are the places you have the highest concentration of chimpanzees. So we have two major national parks. One is called the Otomba Kilimi National Park in the northeast and another one in the northwest, the Loma Mountain National Park. Between the two parks, Sierra Leone is holding more than 50% of our chimp population. So they become such a priority area. So that is how Takugama has gone in there now because there's no point sitting and receiving chimps. It should be more about stopping them coming to the sanctuary.

My strength and my time and my conviction is that's where I need to spend the rest of my life to stop them coming to Takugama. How do we create sanctuaries for them where they are? And that would be the most cost-effective way of doing it. Because once they come in, it's extremely difficult to release them back. There have been only one or two reintroduction programs that have succeeded. But again, with enormous costs.

You can use a fraction of your money to prevent something than waiting for it to go bad. Then it takes a lot more time, money, resources to correct it. These two national parks, I think they have hope. Last year, we did a repeat survey and census of the Loma Mountain National Park. When we did the previous survey about 10 years back, we had about a thousand chimpanzees,

950 chimpanzees in that landscape. After 10 years of our work there, now the recent survey revealed we have about 1,400 chimpanzees in that area. That's an increase of 30, 40%. It is the highest concentration of Western chimpanzee anywhere in that area. That's an increase of 30-40 percent. It is the highest concentration of western chimpanzee anywhere in West Africa. So it's like a jewel on the crown. We work with about 27 communities around the park and we have government system in the past has been you have

forest guards, wildlife wardens kind of thing, but they haven't been effective. But now when we transfer knowledge and power to the community, what we are doing now, all our guards that we are hiring, we call them eco-guards or biomonitors, they all come from the communities. So these people have become custodians of their own forests. So how has your role at Takagama changed over the years? So for the last 15 years, I would say my involvement with the sanctuary is slowly coming down in terms of,

because you've got a lot of capable staff now, and they're able to handle the day-to-day running of the sanctuary. So I am more focusing on working with the government to how do we address the bigger picture in terms of protecting our landscape, getting the right laws in place. How do we protect those hotspots? Because we have a blueprint. We have a map.

Now we know where the chimps are. And how do we work with government communities to protect the wild chimps where they are? Because there's no point sitting and receiving chimps. Every time you rescue a chimp, you feel defeated because you feel that you're not doing enough because things are not changing still. We have done a lot. We have, I mean, made a big difference. I mean, if Takugama didn't come into existence, probably we would have lost all the population.

So we managed to kind of put a stop at a certain point. About four years ago, because of the sanctuary's work, we were finally get the government to understand the issues and declare the chimpanzee as our national animal. Like what you have in Australia, because I'm a big cricket fan. I always admire the cap the cricketers wear you know I won't have that with our cricket team put the chimp on their cap so and the idea is chimpanzee is a flagship species when we talk for chimpanzees we are

basically talking for other wildlife. So when you say this is our national animal, and if you want to protect our national animal, how do you protect it? The first thing is you need to protect where they live. So we are trying to see how we can create that affinity between people and the chim. As part

of that national animal campaign, we have a complete environmental curriculum that we practice in schools. We use that in 30 schools now. But last year, government felt that it's so fantastic and they have included some of the chapters regarding the chimpanzees, the national animal and land degradation, all this into the national curriculum.

The idea is like that planting of the seed, as you said, needs to start very early. We need to plant this so that probably when they grow up and become adults, we don't need to create so much of awareness because they've been growing with it. Mahatma Gandhi from India said it once, to know a nation's value sometimes is also about how they look

after their animals and other beings around them. Bala, we understand that, and I think that's come through so clearly in your work, that Takagama exists not just to provide sanctuary, but to ensure that you can protect and restore enough environment in collaboration with local communities for chimpanzees to be safe again in the wild. How can people best support you? What is the best way for our listeners to help with the work that you're doing? We are quite present in all of our social media platforms.

If you search for Takugama, there are always campaigns going on. You can go to our website, takugama.com. 50% of our income comes from our own initiatives in terms of fundraising activities. We run an ecotourism component. If you go to TripAdvisor and check for Sierra Leone, we are the number one chosen destination. We also have a very good solid volunteer program. So we have had volunteers coming from Australia as well. So that is another thing of contributing because you have a paid volunteer program so you can come and experience and you also pay

something towards running cost of the sanctuary. We are also building schools. We built a secondary school next to the Loma Mountain. We are also starting a water project for another community with another organization called World Hope International. So we are also bringing other development partners into our work to show them that we can only practice conservation if people are taken care of. So the idea is not to get in money to do things that other experts are already doing. You have so many NGOs, there are a thousand NGOs based here who are looking into human needs. So we are thinking how we can bring them close to us and make them help the people as we continue to help the wildlife and the environment.

Fala, we have one final question for you, which is what does the word hope mean to you? It's everything. It's our very existence. Without that, you don't move forward. If you don't dream, you don't succeed. You need to keep that hope. And once you have a dream, go with the hope. There are bad patches for everybody, there are always ups and downs, but stay hopeful. Bala's story reminds us that a call to service can strike us at any time. And what matters is not how qualified we are, but how we choose to respond. As Bala says, if they looked for someone with the right capacity to run a chimp sanctuary,

I would be at the back of the line. But if you look for someone who's prepared to stay for the long haul and try to do something, then probably I would be at the front of the line. If you want to learn more about Bala and support Takugama, you can check out our show notes for more details. We're proud to have featured Bala as one of the 100 people in our Humankind project, which you can find on our website. We'd like to thank our paying subscribers for making these projects possible. If you'd like to find out more about supporting us by becoming a paid subscriber,

check out futurecrunch.com. We would like to acknowledge that this podcast is recorded in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung people. There are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support Hope as a Verb, please subscribe and leave a review. And if you want to reach out directly, send us an email at hope at futurecrunch.com.au. Thanks for listening.