Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Gorilla | Date: Nov 19 2007 | By: admin

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.

Share This