Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, endangered species, rehabilitation | Date: Oct 28 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Within the last couples of months we have received three small dwarf crocodiles here at LWC. One was caught by some children in a river; one was given as a present to a chief of a village. His son came here to sell it, but we convinced him to donate it. The last one was brought here during the night. We don’t know its story. Yesterday, we released two of the crocodiles back to the wild.Unfortunately the last one has some serious wounds after being tied up with ropes around its legs. We will not release him yet, as we are worried that the wounds will get infected.

The two crocodiles were released in the nearby Bimbia Community Forest. In the forest is a river, a perfect habitat for dwarf crocodiles. We wanted to release the crocodiles weeks ago, but the road to the forest is really bad during the rainy season, so the river has not been accessible for months. But now the dry season is finally here, and the road is better.

The release team consisted of keeper James, Driver Egbe, volunteer Yana and me, Sofie. The crocodiles were loaded in seperate transport boxes on the back on our truck, and we were ready to go.

Although the road was much better than in the rainy season, it was still pretty bad and sometimes the ride was a bit scary. The road was very muddy and slippery with big potholes.  It is a stunning tour though, in a very hilly area with the view of Limbe, Mt. Cameroon, the sea and rainforest.

After 1.5 hour’s drive we reach the river, and it was time for the crocodiles to be released. We simply open the transport boxes, and the crocodiles could finally enter the water. It was so nice to see them back in their true habitat, and they both swam away right away. Hopefully they will have a safe life in Bimbia Forest now. Good luck crocodiles!

Best wishes,

Sofie   

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Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, endangered species, rehabilitation | Date: Oct 07 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

I just want to show you some more photos of Ndogpassi Jake, the mandrill we received a month ago.

Jake is doing fine. He is still in quarantine and has more than two months left before he can move on to the enclosure with the other mandrills here. We are trying to give him a lot of enrichment, branches, frozen fruit etc to keep him busy and he loves it! But most of all he loves company and is very happy when we sit outside his cage and talk to him.

We did his health check a few weeks ago, and he seems to be in a good condition, though a bit underweight. While Jake was sedated for the health check we could finally remove the piece of rope he had around his waist when he came here. He looks much better without it!

Best wishes,

Sofie

4 responses so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, Chimpanzee, rehabilitation | Date: Sep 22 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

The three baby chimpanzees, which were confiscated from a logging camp in May, have finally moved out of quarantine. They spent a longer time in quarantine than our animals normally do because we found some strange lumps on their stomachs when we did their first health check. We were afraid that these could be tuberculosis lumps. Fortunately, after doing several tests and examinations, our vet team found out that the lumps were caused by worms which could be treated. This meant that the babies could be moved.

Tikar, the biggest, went directly to the big enclosure with the adult chimpanzees where he is now slowly being introduced. He moved there together with Mbam, a male from the baby group, who was getting too big and too strong to stay with the other babies. When Mbam first came to the satellite cages with all the adult chimpanzees, he was very scared. The adults were very excited about the newcomers and screamed very loudly. Mbam refused to let go of Killi, his keeper from quarantine. But the day after he was fine and had made good friends with Tikar.

The two smallest chimpanzee babies, Ntui and Ngambe, are now in the baby chimp enclosure together with Mayos, a young female. They still need milk twice a day and are too small to be introduced to the adults. They really enjoy their new life, and spend the whole day playing with each other and on the climbing structures. Mayos seems to be very happy about her new friends. She is normally a bit shy and unsecure, but now that she is the one who has been in the baby enclosure the longest, she acts very confidently. The first day Ngambe and Ntui were outside she showed them around and taught them how to use the climbing structures.

 In the picture you see Ngambe  

And here Ntui

Best wishes,

Sofie

2 responses so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, endangered species, rehabilitation | Date: Sep 14 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

A few weeks ago one of our keepers went to Douala to visit some family. Near their house he discovered an adult male mandrill tied up outside a house. It is of course illegal to keep mandrills, which are endangered animals, in private houses. Therefore we contacted the Chief of Wildlife in Douala to help us with a confiscation. The confiscation and the legal prosecution are not done by us, but by officials working for the government. Last Thursday two of our keepers and our veterinarian went to Douala to take care of the animal during the confiscation and to bring it back to the wildlife centre.  We expected that we needed to sedate the mandrill to get it in to the travel box, but the mandrill has been living as a pet in the house for seven years and was very tame.  He just walked into the box.

The owner told us that he was using the mandrill as a guard to take care of his house. He even told that he sometimes left his children alone in the house and put the mandrill outside to protect them. The mandrill lived as a part of the family and was eating the same food as them. They even gave him beer. He seems to be in a good condition though.

The mandrill is called Jake and is a beautiful fully colored adult. We have added Ndogpassi to his name, as he was confiscated in the Ndogpassi area in Douala. He is now in our quarantine where he has to stay for 3 months, so that we are sure he hasn’t got any diseases he can spread to the rest of our mandrills.I worry about the day when we have to introduce him to our mandrill group. First of all we already have adult males in the group, and secondly Jake clearly does not know that he is a mandrill. He is so used to living with humans, and he probably has not seen other mandrills for the last 7 years, so it will be difficult for him to understand their “language” and their behavior. Hopefully he will learn it!

I will keep you updated on Jake.

Best wishes,

Sofie

One response so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, Chimpanzee, Gorilla | Date: Sep 06 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

We are now rebuilding our old chimpanzee enclosure. The chimpanzee enclosure is next to one of our gorilla enclosures with a group of four gorillas. Before the two enclosures were separated with fence and a corridor, but now we have build a wall between the two enclosures. This means, that the gorillas had their enclosure expanded with roughly 100 square meters a few days ago. It is not much, but for the gorillas it has been very exciting and very good enrichment.

The new area is quite muddy, and the silverback Arno has spent the last days jumping and rolling around in the mud - Having a great time. Every time he is feed, he brings the food to that part of the enclosure, so he can sit and eat with his back against the wall.

On the picture you see him covered in mud – he is normally quite black, but today he is brown from the mud.

The other gorillas have also been very interested in the new part of their enclosure. Especially Tinu, one of the females, love to bang on the new wall, making a lot of noise. When the chimpanzees return to their enclosure on the other side of the wall, I am sure that both the gorillas and the chimpanzees will have great fun communicating with each other banging on the wall.

Best wishes,

Sofie

One response so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, endangered species, rehabilitation | Date: Aug 25 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

A few weeks ago we told you that we had released our two civet cats back to the wild.Only a few days after, a man came to the centre with two small civet cats. The man has a cane rat farm, and some farmers brought these civet babies to him. They had been working in their fields and saw that the mother of the babies had run away, so they decided to pick up the babies and bring them to the owner of the cane rat farm.Unfortunately this is the kind of story we hear often. If the farmers would have left the babies the mum would probably have returned later to take care of them.

Now the two civet babies are in our quarantine and they are doing fine. We feed them milk and fruit. As soon as they are old enough to be released, we will take them back to the wild.

Last week we received another wild animal: a dwarf crocodile. A man brought it here. He bought it from some children who were catching small crocodiles on hooks in a river.  He actually bought two crocodiles, but the other one died quickly after he got it. Of course this man had only good intentions when he bought the crocodiles – he wanted to save them and bring them to a safe place.

Unfortunately it is not a good idea to buy these animals as it encourages the children to try to catch more crocodiles and sell them.This crocodile was lucky to survive, and as soon as we can, we are also going to release it back to nature.

These stories make me a bit sad, but they also remind me why our education program is so important. I really hope one day that people will understand how special these animals are, and why it is important to keep them in the wild.  One day!

Best wishes,

Sofie

2 responses so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, endangered species | Date: Aug 14 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

We have an old mandrill here in Limbe Wildlife Centre. He is called “Man alone”.

“Man alone” has been here longer than anyone really remembers. He was already here in 1993, when Limbe Zoo turned in to Limbe Wildlife Centre. One of our keepers has been working here more than 20 years, and he tells that Man Alone was here when he started.  At that time “Man alone” was the only mandrill in the zoo – hence his name. He was then held in a very small cage, where he could not even turn around. Of course this changed when the place became Limbe Wildlife Centre.

In 1996 we received another mandrill, and finally “Man alone” got some company. Mandrills do not live in the area around Limbe, but are found in the southern part of Cameroon. But still we receive mandrills once in a while, and today we have a group of 13 individuals. They are living in a big enclosure next to the baboons. For many years “Man alone” was the dominant male in the group. He was very big and strong, and his face brightly colored as you can see on the photo.

Now he is getting old, and he has lost a lot of weight the last year. He has also developed quite a hunchback. Another male, Prosper, is now the dominant male, and “Man alone” is slowly losing his beautiful colors. He does not move much around anymore, but has a special place in the corner of the enclosure, where he often sits and oversees the group.  Hopefully he will stay with us a bit longer..

Have a nice weekend,

Sofie

One response so far

Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, endangered species | Date: Jul 28 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

If you visit Limbe Wildlife Centre at the moment, you will probably see two persons very busy making swings. It is volunteer Aoife who is from Ireland and our keeper Elvis who takes care of the guenons and mangabeys.

Aoife has been here for three weeks now, and she thinks that some of the monkey enclosures could use more toys. That is why she started her own little swing factory together with Elvis. Since then, nobody has seen Aoife and Elvis without a saw, wood and ropes in their hands. They have produced more than 30 swings now.  Most of the monkeys really like the swings, and enjoy playing on them.

On the picture here you see our grey cheeked mangabey Becky playing on the swing.

Here you can see Limbe Camp, one of our agile mangabeys on a swing. He was actually mostly busy peeling the bark of the wood, eating the insects under it, but that is fine too. As long as they are busy!

Best wishes,

Sofie

Tags: endangered species, mangabeys, monkeys

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Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, Uncategorized, education | Date: Jul 13 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Our educators here take visitors around the centre every day, and most of our keepers guide visitors around whenever they have time. As Cameroon has both a French speaking and an English speaking part, many of our visitors are French speaking. Therefore many of the tours have to be in French. Until now only a few of the staff have been able to do the tours in French, but this is now going to change.

Thanks to Gwendy Reyes-Ills and her parents who have raised a lot of money for our staff education program, 15 of the people working here, last week started on a French course. The course is four hours a week, and pretty intense.

Here you see the group who started taking the French course;

It is great to see how hard the staff is working to learn French and how enthusiastic they are. Every morning after a class, we all practice what we have learned, so all over Limbe Wildlife Centre you will hear French. I even think some of the keepers started talking to their animals in French!

We are very grateful that Gwendy and her parents are supporting our staff education. Merci beaucoup!

Best wishes,

Sofie

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Category: Anne Sofie Meilvang, Cameroon, Gorilla, education | Date: Jul 02 2009 | By: limbewildlifecentre

It has been a busy time for the education team in Limbe. Every year we have holiday workshops here at Limbe Wildlife Centre. Last week we had the first one this year, which were for secondary school students. This year’s theme is “Gorillas, research and conservation”. We decide to focus on gorillas, because 2009 is appointed as “Year of the gorilla”.  Our holiday workshops are sponsored by Buschgarden Zoo in Florida, and they came up with the idea of focusing on research. The holiday workshops are free of charge, and it lasts for three full days. They are very popular among the children and adults in Limbe, and every year we see a lot of well known faces from previous workshops. This year more than 50 children signed up for the first workshop. This year the program was very busy. Within the three days, the students had several lectures about gorillas and conservation. They learned how to recognize gorillas from each other, and they did behaviour studies on the gorillas here. They went to a nearby forest to investigate if it was a suitable habitat for a gorilla group. We also had a gorilla researcher, Albert, from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) here to tell about his job. He is Cameroonian and do research on Cross River gorillas. The children loved to hear his stories about counting gorilla nests and analyzing gorilla faeces. Buschgarden Zoo has holiday workshops at the same time as us, and our children always have a chat session with Buschgardens children in Florida. It is a very important part of the workshop, and this year the students discussed everything, from the weight of a tiger and the status of lemurs, to how often people do shopping in Florida and how big a Cameroonian family is. On the last day the children prepared posters showing what they have learned doing the workshop. They all have to present their poster and the ones how had made the best poster, and who did the best presentation got awarded. At the end all the participants are given certificates.Everything went very well, and we are now looking forward for the next three workshops, one for primary school children, one for high school children and one for university students and other interested adults. We are very grateful that Buschgarden Zoo sponsors our holiday workshop, and that so many people are interested in learning about primates and conservation.   Best wishes Sofie

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