Hi all,

thank you for making comments on the LWC’s new site. It is great to know that there are people out there reading our profile and keen to know more. In answer to your question, Xavier, Limbe is very safe to visit and is really easy to get to. It is only 1.5hrs drive from the nearest international airport, Douala, and the town and surrounding area are very safe. Limbe, a bustling fishing port, is within the Mount Cameroon ecosystem, that boasts one of the highest levels of biodiversity in Africa (IUCN 1972). However this precious ecosystem is under threat from the high human population density of this coastal region. As such the LWC finds itself very well placed on the front line of conservation, at the interface between fragile ecosystems and a growing human population. Consequently we place a lot of emphasis on conservation education, utilising the captive wild animals at the LWC as ambassadors for their species. The responses that we get from local people who visit our project (over 30,000/year) and from the schools that we visit are very positive, with most people being very receptive to the idea that their forest ecosystems need to be protected for future generations. However creating conservation results from simple enthusiasm is the challenge that we now face. The future of the Cameroonian rainforests depend on how successful we are!

Also in response to your request I am uploading some photos of our drills: The drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) is one of the most endangered primate species in Africa, with current estimates reckoning that there are only 3,000 to 6,000 left in the wild. The LWC, which is situated within the natural range of this species, has the second largest captive breeding group of drills in the world and hopes one day to be able to release many of them back into the wild. The largest breeding group are found in the LWC and the Pandrillus Foundation’s sister project Drill Ranch in Nigeria.

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thank you all for your comments and also thank you for your patience whilst I have been struggling to get used to the system for updating the website. Now that I think I have the hang of it I hope to be able to reply to your comments a lot quicker.

Currently we are building up to the imminent arrival of the 4 gorillas known as the ‘Taiping Four’ who are residing in Pretoria Zoo, South Africa. After a long legal and moral battle over their ownership it seems that they will be finally coming home to Cameroon and the Limbe Wildlife Centre has been selected as the project where they shall live. The date for their return is the 30th November and I shall be travelling to Pretoria this week to make the final arrangements before, hoepfully, returning safely and without any hiccups on the 30th with the 4 gorillas. In order to prepare for their return, we have moved 4 adult chimpanzees out of their quarantine cage in order that there can be space for the gorillas. The cage, which will be their home for a few weeks whilst they go through quarantine, is currently being re-floored and painted and is having gorilla-proof hammocks hung inside. After clearing quarantine the 4 gorillas, (3 females and 1 male) will join our 11 resident gorillas in the LWC’s large open gorilla enclosure, where they will have access to climbable trees, a pond and 2500sq.m of outside space.

The Taiping Four gorillas began life as wild western-lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) somewhere in the forests of Cameroon. At some point in 2001 they were illegally taken as infants from the forest by hunters who will have shot and killed their mothers and other family members for bushmeat. The infants were then trafficked across the boarder to Nigeria and from there they were flown, with false CITES permits, via Johannesburg, to Malaysia where they were being prepared for public display as captive bred gorillas at the Taiping Zoo. However, due to the awareness of the International Primate Protection League (IPPL) the true wild origin of these infants was soon discovered. Consequently the gorillas were seized from the Taiping Zoo by the Govt. of Malaysia and were returned to Africa (South Africa), but not, as should have happened, to their country of origin, Cameroon. Pretoria Zoo have been looking after the gorillas for the past few years whilst the Govt. of South Africa, the Govt. of Cameroon and the international conservation community as a whole have argued over who owns the unfortunate gorillas. Finally, after DNA tests proved that the gorillas were western-lowland and were thus most likely to have come from Cameroon, it was decided that the four gorillas, who are no longer small infants, should be returned to Cameroon.

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