Last week we started the introduction program of Adjibolo to the resident gorillas in the Limbe Wildlife Centre. We had selected Nyango as her new foster mother, as she seemed to be the one most interested in Bolo and we thought she would be easily managed into proper motherhood. This expectation did not come true. Nyango was not paying proper attention to Bolo, so we decided to discontinue this effort.

Our second choice was Brighter, a very gentle female. And now Brighter turns out to be a very good choice. She is very happy to mother over Bolo, picking her up carefully, putting her on her back and letting her sleep on her belly. And Adjibolo loves it. Although in the first half hour she was a bit afraid, she quickly started to appreciate this big hairy mother. It is no problem to feed Adjibolo, as Brighter just patiently watches over her while she drinks the milk from the bottle. After a week of spending more and more hours during the day, we decided on Friday that it was time to let them stay together for the night. Bama, one of our gorilla keepers, stayed the night with them. We were delighted to see that Brighter spend the whole night on the ground, not risking Adjibolo to fall from the hammock while asleep. They both slept through the night, until just after six when Bama was there to feed Adjibolo a bottle of milk. The night after that went exactly the same.

We are all very happy that this first part of the introduction goes so smoothly. We will now give mother and daughter some time to bond and then we will start introducing other members of the group. They are all impatiently waiting for the day that they can play with the new gorilla. If all goes well, Brighter will be there to protect Adjibolo from gorillas that play too roughly.

Simone de Vries
Assistant Project Manager

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Every year the number of primates in the Limbe Wildlife Centre grows, because more victims of the bush meat trade are brought in. Although it is our job to take care of these primates, it is our ultimate goal to make ourselves redundant. It is through education that we try to help the Cameroonian people to become aware of the problem and to save their precious wildlife. Every animal brought to the LWC is a sign that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Part of the Limbe Wildlife Centre Conservation Education Program focuses on children. We run an outreach program that reaches hundreds of school students each year and every Saturday we have Nature Club. The outreach program consists of 16 lessons, about primates, ecology and conservation, that are taught once a week during 5 months. At the end of the program all the students visit the LWC to see the animals that they have learned so much about. Last week it was time for this annual invasion of students. More then 800 children came to the LWC and participated in the special program we had set out for them. The students who had successfully finished the program received their certificate. All students received a worksheet with questions about our primates. It stimulated them to observe the animals carefully and find out themselves about the behaviour of animals or the differences between males and females. This way of learning is new to Cameroonian students, as they are used to learning by listening or reading.

In Nature Club we have more possibilities to take the children out and let them explore. Two weeks ago we have taken the children out for an insect excursion. One of the important subjects we teach to the students is biodiversity and there is no other group of animals that shows biodiversity better then insects, especially in Limbe. With very simple means we let the students catch insects in order to observe them. Each student had a half plastic bottle to put the insects in. Unfortunately we do not have magnifying glasses, but the students were very interested to observe the insects in the bottles. It is then easy to teach the children a lot more about what the animals eat, how they live, etc.

We would like to expand our education efforts and you can help us with that. There are several things that we need to make our education program more effective. I list a few of them here:
- insect nets: 100 euro
- magnifying insect boxes: 250 euro
- frames for posters education hall: 300 euro
- projector: 1000 euro

Thank you so much for you support!
Best wishes,
Simone de Vries

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