Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Gorilla | Date: Dec 30 2007 | By: admin

On Thursday 20th December I received a telephone call to inform me of an infant gorilla that had been seized in the town of Batouri in the east of Cameroon by a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, from a hunter who was trying to sell her.

Batouri is very far from Limbe, so I recruited the assistance of the army who sent a vehicle to collect the infant and bring her safely to the capital Yaoundé. Meanwhile I drove to Yaoundé from Limbe to meet the guard. On the 22nd December, after a frantic 2 days, I returned to Limbe with the little infant in hand. I can report that the little gorilla, which weighs 5kg and is approx 7 months old, is so far faring well. She is eating and drinking well and has bonded with one of our staff members.

Infant gorillas are a lot more sensitive than infant chimpanzees and require much more nursing and one to one care, and so the arrival of the new infant means that the staff member selected to become the infant’s surrogate mother will now be with the gorilla 24 hours a day for the foreseeable future. This, together with the food and medical costs that we will incur, places a huge drain on our resources and we would like to appeal for any help you can give us.

The weekly milk formula costs for the infant are approximately $10/week, and the medical costs in the first 6 months will probably be about $200. The cost of having a staff member looking after the gorilla for 24 hours a day is $50/week.

It is terrible to think that gorillas are still being killed and infants sold and it was a very sad Xmas present for us all. However the work of the civil servant was exemplary and I would like to thank him for his efforts to see that this infant was rescued as quickly as possible. Regarding the hunter, we are trying to find out more about who it was and what can be done about him, but according to the civil servant he was a ‘pygmy’ hunter who did not have any idea that it was illegal to kill and eat gorillas.

In recognition of the efforts of the government civil servant we have decided to name the infant after his family name ‘Adjibolo’ or ‘Bolo’ for short.

I shall try to keep you all informed of her progress in the coming months.

Having started the month will 11 gorillas, we end with 16 (plus over a thousand parrots)! Its been an interesting few weeks.

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