Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Bush meat, Cameroon, Simone de Vries | Date: Aug 05 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

The two African civets (Civettictis civetta) that were brought to the Limbe Wildlife Centre in March, will be released in the forest today. When they arrived in the LWC they were still babies, their mother possibly killed for bushmeat, but in 5 months time they have grown up enough to go back to the wild.

The civets were reared with puppy milk and later fed with fruits, rats and noodles. With this diet we have successfully reared several civets. They stay in a nice enclosure, that gives them plenty of coverage. We don’t want them to become used to people too much. The civets are monitored closely by our vet team. On the picture you can see how Dr. John is giving one of the civets a last treatment against worms, while keeper James is holding the animal. The very useful gloves were donated by Stichting Aap in the Netherlands (www.aap.nl).

For the reintroduction of civets and other non primate species we work together with the Ebo Forest Research Project of San Diego Zoo. Their research camp is a perfect place to release animals and keep an eye out for them afterwards. Civets that were released here earlier typically disappear right away into the forest, but one of them lingered around a bit and seemed to be doing quite well.

This morning very early our two civets started their travel to the forest in a transport box. They will be fed and watered during the trip, first in the car, then on the head of a porter. It is a long and strenuous walk through a thick forest with a big box on your head!

We will have to wait for two weeks, when this reasearch group comes back from the forest, to hear about how the release went.

Best wishes, Simone