Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Gorilla | Date: Dec 09 2007 | By: admin

Finally the ‘Taiping Four’ gorillas are home. Better late than never! The journey from South Africa to Cameroon was incredibly long and tiring for the gorillas and all involved in their care, but, when the four gorillas walked confidently out of their travel crates into their new quarantine enclosure, we all knew that it was worth it.

The journey had begun 29 hours earlier when the lightly anaesthetised gorillas were placed in their travel crates to begin the long journey home. We were particularly concerned that the gorillas would be stressed to wake up and find themselves alone and inside a strange crate. Therefore, to try to reduce their stress, the crates were placed facing inwards on the truck. In this way, on waking up, the gorillas would find themselves facing one another. This seemed to have the desired calming affect as, one hour after being placed in the crates, all of the gorillas were sitting up and inquisitively looking around.

At 20:00hrs we arrived at the cargo bay of Oliver Tambo Airport where the gorillas were weighed and the crates were tied down on to pallets ready for their flight to Nairobi. Carin Cloete, Curator of Mammals from Pretoria Zoo, and I remained with the gorillas, feeding them and offering them fluids until the latest possible moment before we were ushered away to join the 24 person delegation that was accompanying the gorillas from South Africa to Cameroon.

At 14:40 the following day the Kenyan Airways flight, that was carrying the gorillas free of charge, touched down at Douala International Airport. Carin and I had checked the gorillas during our long lay over in Nairobi, but it was still a very anxious time for us as we watched the pallets being offloaded on to the tarmac in Douala. Seeing their faces peeking out of the holes in the crates was a moment of great relief.

I was dreading the journey from Douala to Limbe, as the traffic can be awful and any delay would have added more stress to the already tired gorillas; however the much dreaded final leg of our journey turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of my professional life. With Mount Cameroon back-lit by the red sun setting over the sea we drove towards Limbe, a single police motorcyclist with siren blaring clearing the typically grid-locked traffic and leading a 40 strong convoy of four wheel drive vehicles, all with hazard lights flashing. The people of Douala all turned to look, expecting to see the Prime Minister’s vehicle, but instead found an old truck carrying four gorillas. News on the radio proclaimed the return of Cameroon’s gorillas and people nodded in appreciation at the sight. For a moment it seemed that times had changed in Cameroon, with gorillas being afforded the respect that they deserved in the national psyche.

At the Limbe Wildlife Centre hundreds of people had gathered in the darkness to welcome their gorillas home. The truck pulled into the quarantine area of the Limbe Wildlife Centre and in a much practised process the 4 crates were unloaded and, with the crowds cheering, the four gorillas trotted into their new enclosure that had been draped in browse and cut branches. Their long journey had come to an end.

The following day the official celebration for the return of the gorillas was held in the neighbouring Limbe Botanic Gardens. A speech proclaiming the importance of Cameroon’s wildlife was made by the Minister of Forests and Fauna, and five African grey parrots, recently seized from an illegal shipment at Douala Airport, were released as a symbolic gesture. The event, watched by hundreds of people and recorded by several news crews, was the answer to those who, quite rightly, have questioned the reasoning behind the decision to return the gorillas to Cameroon. Through this event the gorilla’s sorry saga, that started with the shooting of their mothers in the rainforests of Cameroon and their illegal shipment across the globe on an international airline, was brought to the attention of the Cameroonian people. Through their return the minds of Cameroonian politicians and public alike have, for the time being at least, been focussed on the plight of Cameroonian wildlife. This was not a simple story of four gorillas, rather it was a story that echoed the plight of all Cameroonian wildlife that finds itself being taken from its forest homes to satisfy a human demand. Wildlife was, for this moment, top of the agenda. How long the story, and the conservation issues that it represents, remain in people’s minds and whether any change is realised as a result we shall only be able to guess in the future; but for one moment there seemed to be hope. Long may that hope last.

The return of the Taiping Four gorillas was facilitated by the Government of Cameroon, the Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance, the Pandrillus Foundation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the International Primate Protection League and the Last Great Ape Organisation.