Holmes: It's a cool and pleasant country on the shores of Lake Victoria.

But for two decades, it was a byword for bloodstained tyranny. This was the nation ruled by Idi Amin and Milton Obote - a land of darkness.

Then, ten years ago, Yoweri Musoveni fought his way to power. Slowly, the clouds have parted; there's security now and even a degree of freedom.

Uganda is on the way to becoming once again what the British settlers called it - the pearl of Africa.

Even now, Uganda discourages outside scrutiny of its human rights record. Yet this particular Australian has been welcomed - despite her determination to set free a group of prisoners.

Because nobody wants to keep these captives behind bars.

Unfortunately setting them free won't be simple and it won't be cheap.

Debby Cox: Hi guys, hi Robbie.

Holmes: Formerly a keeper of African mammals at Sydney';s Taronga Zoo, veterinary nurse Debby Cox has worked with captive chimpanzees for 15 years.

Debby Cox: There's a good boy. There's a good boy, our Robbie. Hey, what's that on your nose? What's that on your nose?

Holmes: She's horrified at the conditions in which Entebbe Zoo chimpanzees are confined.

Debby Cox: This is Cykio

He's basically been here for 20 years now. He came here as an infant.

Holmes: An old chimp like Cykio is doomed to a life of captivity. But at least it could be made a lot pleasanter.
Debby Cox: These are the plans that we had from Taronga and we hope to adopt them.

Holmes: Modelling their plans on the chimp enclosure at Taronga Zoo, Debby Cox and the new director, Bill Hamula, are hoping to make use of the zoo's extensive grounds by the shores of Lake Victoria.

Debby Cox: ... other branches out here.

Bill Hamula: We'd like to establish an enclosure here for them, to give them at least the feeling that they have a little bit of nature around them instead of keeping them in an enclosed cage.

Holmes: The problem is money. The moat for the new chimp enclosure has already been dug with the help of American aid. But now the funds have dried up again.

Debby Cox: It's very frustrating when you are working with them that you have to just sit and wait until somebody who's got money is going to come across and give you the money to do what you need to do.

Debby Cox: I think of them as people, they are people. They're chimp people.

Holmes: For the younger chimp people of Entebbe, Debby Cox and Bill Hamula have still more ambitious plans. The majority of the zoo's chimpanzees are orphans under five years old. They've been captured from the wild by poachers to be sold off as pets. Most of them saw their mothers killed before their eyes. They are gluttons for affection.
Debby Cox: This is the baby of the group. They enjoy physical contact with anybody that they can get which can be quite daunting for people when they first meet a chimp, that they actually run up and want to be held and grabbed.

Holmes: And they do a fair bit of grabbing themselves. A three dollar plastic basketball will do, a seventy thousand dollar TV camera is even better.

Debby Cox: Katy, Katy, leave it alone, hands off, take your hands off, you can look but you've got to take your hands off, okay? That's a good girl.

Holmes: Their curiosity is insatiable; their energy exhausting.

Debby Cox: We should make a play session every day, to come in with them. They need to expel their energy.

Holmes: Any live chimpanzees found in private hands in Uganda is automatically confiscated and handed over to the zoo for safekeeping. But it's unthinkable to Debby Cox that they should be condemned to a life sentence - perhaps fifty or sixty years - in a wire-mesh, concrete cage.

Debby Cox: Our idea here is not to keep the chimps in the zoo situation, we want them out as close to being in the wild as possible. At this stage we can't reintroduce them but we can build sanctuaries for them that are basically a wild habitat.

As close as we can get to where we can still manage them and provide for them as we have to, but they can live their lives as free from us as possible.

For the animal, as well as the human inhabitants of Uganda, there's been dramatic improvement since the days of Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

Debby Cox: I know during the bad periods here in Uganda the wildlife was totally slaughtered. You would drive through National Parks and it would be totally empty of animals, it would be void of it.

And now in eight years we're seeing massive numbers of hippos, of elephant, you see the Ugandan Kob just everywhere and that's really great to see.

Boat engine starting, boat travelling across water, Debby pointing out hut, boat arrives at dock, chimps in trees,
Holmes: The chimp sanctuary was what we had really come to see. It's been established on a small island out in the lake - close enough for tourists to visit, but safe from predators like leopards and guarded 24 hours a day from poachers.

The sanctuary chimps will never be self-sufficient. There isn't enough food on the island to sustain them. But human contact is kept to a minimum. The keepers rarely set foot on the island itself.

Meticulous notes are taken about every individual chimp, and how well they are adapting to their semi-wild existence.

Debby Cox: Who's that coming down to retrieve food?

Morris: That is Kidogo.

Holmes: Kidogo, for example, has become famous among the keepers for her dogged persistence in adversity.

The most rewarding experiment has been the recent introduction of the three month old infant, Akiki. She was adopted by an older female, Peace - who, it seems, is now prepared to share the load of motherhood with her companions.
Debby Cox: Who's coming down now?

Morris: That is Connie carrying Akiki. Up to yesterday Peace has not been leaving the little baby to these little girls Sophie, Connie and Nagoti, but these days you can see Connie carrying Akiki when they are going up to the clearing.

Debby Cox: To have a young female like Sophie giving food is really good to see. And they are showing excellent mothering behaviour.

Holmes: The chimps have adapted remarkably well to a life without humans and the sanctuary is financially self supporting.

But there's no room here for the orphans back at Entebbe. The hunt is on for another suitable sanctuary site - and a hundred thousand dollars to set it up. But Debby's dreams don't stop there.

Debby Cox: I would prefer rather than see the chimps in the sanctuaries just sort of being in retirement homes, which is what at the moment it appears that they are, that these chimps should be going back to the wild, that we rebuild forests and those forests that we rebuild they become the homes for the chimps rather than these types of sanctuaries.
Debby Cox: They've got to learn the skills, there's no way these orphans would have a chance against wild chimps but maybe their grandchildren would have a chance because each time a generation comes by they're learning more things.
Holmes: There are still places in Uganda where wild chimps live the life that Debby Cox dreams of for her orphans grandchildren. And there’s no better guide than Richard Wrangham, one of the world's foremost primatologists.

For 12 years the Harvard University professor has been returning to the Kibali Reserve, to spend weeks panting up and down the steep forest paths in pursuit of a community of wild chimpanzees.

Richard Wrangham: I think we're talking about a greeting between two parties here.

Holmes: He knows every member of the group by name, even when glimpsed through a thick screen of foliage.

Richard Wrangham: That's Makoku, I haven't seen him since August. You see, they are eating these ground herbs, like this one but much bigger.

And they eat the pith but while they are doing this they are very difficult to see, they are in this thick vegetation.
So what we want is to wait here until they come out in to the open after eating.

Richard Holmes: And sure enough, after a few minutes wait, an adult male made its way cautiously out onto the path only metres away.

Richard Wrangham: This is LB, uh, Light Brown, and he's a beautiful young male, he's in his mid 20's, something like that. He has not shown any kind of serious interest in competing for high rank, he's kind of everybody's friend.

Richard: Mind you he can put the fear of God into you if he starts displaying. He has the most terrific displays.

He slaps the ground, absolutely beautifully and it is only because he has come this close that we are this close, if we walked up to this close, he would be nervous about us.
Chimp eating, walking away, another chimp walks in, looks at Richard taking photos But it's wonderful because ... we've been studying chimps here now for about twelve years going back and they're really letting us see into their wild society.

Their social lives have the kind of complexity that the human society does. They’re full of very strong emotions, tremendous affection, tremendous affiliation, but also maybe, feelings of hostility, feelings of revenge for something done. Not just to them but to their relations, their friends.
Holmes: Within a couple of minutes, we had another visitor.

Richard Wrangham: This is Johnny. And Johnny's very relaxed with us too. His hair is slightly erect and he's a little nervous about this tripod.

Holmes: Nobody knows how many chimpanzees there are in Kibali Forest - somewhere between 500 and a thousand. In countries like Zaire to the west, poaching is rife, but here they're relatively safe.

Richard speaking, chimp eating, looking It's nothing, it's nothing, don't worry.

Holmes: As members of a 500 strong gene pool, Johnny, Light Brown and their descendants have a long term future as long as their forest remains undisturbed.

But many of Africa's chimpanzees are in danger of slowly dying out. And Debby Cox believes her orphan chimps can help

Debby Cox: Right now the world population on paper looks quite healthy if you look at the numbers. But the problem is most of the population are isolated and they’re very small pockets. Some of them are down to 50 animals.

Holmes: It's a 16 kilometre long gash in the flat savanna country. In the gorge itself a river flows through a dark, moist rainforest whose trees tower forty metres above the ground.

Here lives a community of a few dozen wild chimpanzees. They're guarded and protected. They have enough to eat. But the open savanna country is impassable for these shy forest animals. They're permanently cut off from the rest of their kind.

Holmes: There are many such isolated populations of chimpanzees all over central Africa. In the long run, says Debby Cox, these communities are too small to survive. Constant inbreeding will produce mutations, increasing infant mortality and finally extinction.

Debby Cox: Right now it doesn't happen and we're not going to see it. But in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years time this will happen. And if we don't do something to stop it, we will lose these chimps.

So my idea is that we form forest bridges between the isolated populations, reforest those areas, make a corridor where the chimps can pass.

But of course if you're looking at 80 kilometres, there's no way you're going to get one population moving 80 kilometres to another population, so to fill in the gap we would use the sanctuary chimps.

Holmes: Back in Kibali Forest, Richard Wrangham is not entirely discouraging. Two years ago, his team tried to introduce a single orphaned female into the wild community that he studies.

Richard Wrangham: What that told us is, I think it is possible. that particular effort didn't work but she was very young, she was only about four and a half years old and if the right things happened, you could do it.

But you got to be incredibly lucky. For most of these orphaned chimps, there's nothing you can do but give them as good a home as possible in captivity.

Holmes: By a good home in captivity, Richard Wrangham emphatically doesn’t mean a place like this. The hunt for more sanctuary sites is urgent. Before the chimps grow too old to make the transition to semi-freedom.

Whether or not these little creatures hold the future of their species in their genes, the fact is that 98% of those genes are precisely the same as our own.

If this is no way to treat an innocent human being, it's no way to treat an orphaned chimpanzee.