Lucky's Story

Lucky first came to our attention in July 2007 when we received a call from a concerned tourist who had seen a young baboon for sale in Salima Market, 100km east of Lilongwe. We immediately went to investigate and soon found the illegal vendor with Lucky on a 3m chain; the same one he had been tied to for the last 3 years.

It turned out that Lucky's mother had been killed for bushmeat and her tiny orphaned baby, who was too small to be worth eating, had been sold into the illegal pet trade. This is a situation that occurs all too often in Africa and around the world.

On first impression, it appeared that in spite of his lack of freedom, Lucky had been relatively well cared for. It was only when the time came to release him into his new enclosure that we realised that the chain around his middle had clearly never been loosened. During the three years that Lucky had been tethered, he had done a lot of growing and his flesh had engulfed the chain, leaving the most horrific wound.

We were fortunate that during the unfolding of these events, primate experts from AAP in Holland were present as was a film crew who captured the whole thing on camera. One of the AAP staff said that in 12 years of working with primates rescued from the illegal pet trade, he had never seen such a horrendous of mistreatment.

With much care and attention, Lucky has made a complete recovery and has been successfully integrated into one of the Centre's two baboon troops which are scheduled for release back into the wild in 2008.