Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: endangered species | Date: Jul 16 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

The very young primates that come to the Limbe Wildlife Centre normally get a human foster mom to take care of them and to give milk 24 hours a day. The person who takes this task usually gets attached to the animal very quickly, just as if it were a human baby. It is remarkable that the same mechanism works for different species of monkeys.

Last year I took care of a red-eared monkey Ebo during four months. After her period of quarantine I started her introduction to a mixed group of guenons. There was a female red-eared monkey in the group, but it was a female putty-nosed monkey who was immediately interested and pretty soon took the baby over from me. Ever since she has been very suspicious of me. It seems like she thinks that I might take her baby away again. Every morning when I do my round and come up to the fence Ebo comes towards me, but her foster mom quickly picks her up and takes her away from me. I am glad that Ebo has found another mother, although it is not precisely her own kind.

Last week one of our agile mangabeys died. She had a cancer in the uterus and despite two operations we were not able to make her better. Extra sad was that she left behind a baby agile mangabey named Buea, which she had adopted a few months ago. The quarantine period for Buea was over, so yesterday we moved her to the mangabey enclosure. There are three male agile mangabeys and one female grey-cheeked mangabey housed together. We had isolated the female and joined her with Buea. After just one minute the female started grooming Buea and today already they are inseparable.

The only primate who still has a human foster mom is the chimpanzee Mayos (see blog 30th May). To be precise: she also has a human foster aunt, because one of our volunteers is assisting Sandy with the 24-hour care. Mayos is doing great and easily switches from one to the other. Her introduction to two other infant chimpanzees has started and they are very careful with her. Some day soon she will stay with them, but we will still be around a lot to make sure she has everything she needs.

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Category: Guenon | Date: Jul 14 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

In the last few months many monkeys were brought to the Limbe Wildlife Centre. In quarantine we have now two putty-nosed guenons, two mona monkeys and one agile mangabey.

The situations in which we find these monkeys are sometimes heart breaking. We found a mona of around two years old in Batoke, a major bushmeat village close to Limbe. She was kept with a rope around the waist, tied to a wooden structure. She had no protection from rain or sun and was malnourished. From frustration she had been plucking her hairs, so she looks awful. In this case the owner was happy that we took the mona away, because she said that it had become a problem for her. Bakassi, as we have called her, is now together with the other mona, Takwai, and the two putty-nosed monkeys Kumba and Manya. It is great to see that she has put up some weight and has become close friends with Kumba. They sleep together in a hummock and during the day they groom each other and play together. Bakassi is still rather bald, but we have not seen her pluck her hair again. We hope that one day her fur will be thick and fluffy again.

Takwai, who arrived at the Limbe Wildlife Centre at the end of April (see earlier blog), has only joined the group a few days ago. For more then two months I have taken her home every night, because she needed milk late at night and in the morning early. She is much younger than the other monkeys, but the others are still too young to adopt her as a baby, so Takwai still has to find her place in the group. But now after a few days she is already more comfortable then on the first day, so she will be fine.

The monkeys arriving at the LWC show us that we still have a lot of work to do. The high school in Batoke is part of our outreach program, so all the students that attend this school participate in our 17 weeks Conservation Education Program. Hopefully these children will be aware of the necessity to take care of the environment when they grow up.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries

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Category: education | Date: Jul 10 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Yesterday was the last day of our second Conservation Education Holiday Workshop of this summer. This week we had a very interesting group of students of around 11 years old. Just a few students had been at the Limbe Wildlife Centre before, so for most it was quite a new experience. In the regular school curriculum in Cameroon conservation is not taught, so there was a lot to learn.

The theme of this year’s Holiday Workshops is ‘Animals and Culture’. Busch Gardens Zoo in Florida is sponsoring the workshops and they are simultaneously organising Summer Camps with the same theme. One of the very popular parts of the program is the internet chat session that links up the Cameroonian students with the students in Florida. Before this I told the story of Little Red Riding Hood to our children and how that story influences our thoughts on wolves. I also told about how the wolf almost got extinct in the USA and was reintroduced to the wild later on. So one of the topics our students were asking about was how the wolves are doing now and how the American students feel about wolves. The students at the other side were equally prepared because they asked about the meaning of the elephant for the Bakweri culture. The Bakweri people live on Mount Cameroon.

Our students had already learned a lot about the meaning of elephants, because they had participated in a traditional Bakweri Elephant Dance. One of the men explained the meaning of it all. The elephant is considered the strongest and most powerful animal of the forest. If you do something bad, like stealing, the elephants will come to punish you. They might for instance destroy your crops. The dance acts this out and warns everybody to be good to each other.

This year’s theme is very useful to bring our conservation message across in a very playful way. Storytelling, making poems and singing are all great teaching tools, especially with young kids. We will have two more workshops this summer, but then for High School and University level. That will give us the possibility to discuss how culture influences our choices concerning conservation. I am already looking forward to that.

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager

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Category: Gorilla | Date: Jul 01 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

I have some very sad news that I wanted to share with the readers of this blog:

On the morning of the 2nd June 2008 one of the gorillas known as the Taiping Four died after a short illness. The female gorilla, called Oyin, arrived from South Africa on 1st December 2007 and had spent 4 months in quarantine with the three other gorillas that had arrived with her. In mid-April the four were moved to the main gorilla enclosure to begin the introduction programme to the resident gorilla group. However in late April Oyin became sick and despite treatment her condition steadily deteriorated and after 10 days she sadly died. A full post mortem examination was performed and tissue samples have been sent to the Great Ape Health Monitoring Unit at the Robert Koch Institute in Germany for analysis, the result of which will hopefully shed some light on the cause of the death.

Everyone at the LWC is devastated by the death of Oyin so soon after her arrival and we are monitoring all of the other gorillas closely for any signs of illness. Currently all of the gorillas are well and the introduction of the other three gorillas has gone very smoothly and they are now fully integrated with the resident gorilla group.

We would like to thank all of our supporters and friends who have been so supportive through this difficult time. I know everyone who has cared for the Taiping Four during their stay in Pretoria and in Limbe are very saddened by this news. As soon as we have more information regarding the cause of death I shall share it with you.

Felix Lankester
Project Manager

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