Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Cameroon, african grey parrot, illegal trade | Date: Nov 28 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

With ‘only’ around fifty African grey parrots remaining from the confiscations of November 2007, we thought that we were almost through with our parrot adventure. But the government of Cameroon takes the parrot trade seriously and last week another 39 parrots were seized from trappers in Mundemba and brought to the Limbe Wildlife Centre. It is incredible how much these birds eat, so we are looking for more funds for food and veterinary care. Each donation is very welcome.

Workers of DED (German Development Organisation) delivered the parrots to the LWC. We would like to thank them, because this was the quickest possible way to get the birds out of their miserable situation. They were packed in three small baskets, all on top of each other.

They must have been without food and water for several days, because their condition was very bad and they were covered with faeces. As all the wings were clipped, they will have to stay in the LWC for a long time in order to regrow their feathers. In the first few days two of the parrots died.

The parrots are now housed in the quarantine. We will try to get some more meat on their bones soon, because they are very weak now. The sound of them has already changed from a nervous screaming to a nice variable song. Even if you know nothing about this species of birds, you just hear that they are doing better now then a few days ago. As soon as possible we will join them with the parrots that are living in our mango tree enclosure.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager

3 responses so far

Category: Bush meat, Cameroon, Felix Lankester, Gorilla, endangered species, illegal trade | Date: Nov 24 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

 The famous western lowland gorillas, known as the ‘Taiping gorillas’, who were returned to Cameroon from South Africa a year ago continue to keep everyone at the Limbe Wildlife Centre extremely busy.   The integration with the resident gorillas at the LWC did not go as well as was hoped and in recent months, whilst the resident gorillas have remained healthy, they have suffered repeated bouts of sickness.  It was apparent that stress was a probable factor in their ill health and in order to relieve this stress it became clear that the gorillas needed their own space in which to live.  However this posed us with a conundrum: with no land available in the grounds of the LWC to build on how were we going to create a new enclosure in which they could peacefully live?  Additionally time was of the essence yet the building of a new enclosure is typically measured in years, not weeks, and with their deteriorating health we felt that we needed to make a change and soon.   Fortunately we were just coming to the end of a three year construction project to build a new chimpanzee enclosure and so the decision was taken to move one whole group of chimpanzees into this new enclosure ahead of schedule.  The plan being that the vacating chimpanzees would leave behind an old enclosure space which, with some rapid renovations, could be transformed into a dedicated gorilla enclosure.   

The big day arrived, the rope had been placed, Jonathan had done his show and all that remained was to selectively let out from the night house only those gorillas that were to be transferred.  The sliding doors were opened and as soon as the gorillas were let out they all tentatively approached the mystery rope.  Like a bunch of school boys daring each other to see who was the bravest they tested the rope, climbing a few metres and then jumping back down.  After a few attempts, however, the young male Arno finally reached the top.

Now sitting on the dividing wall he could see how the rope led into an interesting looking place filled with Aframomum melegueta plants strewn about enticingly.  Gorillas love to eat this plant and so, perhaps buoyed by his success so far, Arno carried on down the rope and in to his new home.  Encouraged by Arno the females, watching below, soon followed him over the wall.  The plan had worked. 

Tags: bushmeat, Cameroon, conservation, Felix Lankester, Gorilla, great ape, Limbe Wildlife Centre, Taiping

3 responses so far

Category: Bush meat, Cameroon, Felix Lankester, endangered species, illegal trade | Date: Nov 06 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

The aftermath of the seizure of 1227 African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) from Douala Airport, Cameroon, back in December 2007 is still consuming much of our time and resources.  Despite having released over 900 parrots back into the wild, we still have approximately 100 birds left.  Back in February 2008, with assistance from the World Parrot Trust, we removed the damaged wing feathers from hundreds of parrots and of these approximately 200 have successfully re-grown their feathers and have been released in to the forests around Limbe.  The remaining 100 birds have not yet re-grown their feathers and are still living with us at the Limbe Wildlife Centre.  Some of these birds may never re-grow their damaged feathers and will remain flightless, whilst others, we hope, will eventually recover their feathers and will be able to fly off.   

  The plan now is to build these remaining parrots an open-top enclosure surrounding a mango tree into which they can climb and live freely.  Any parrots that are able to fly will be able to fly off into neighbouring trees, thereby strengthening their flight muscles in preparation for the time when they will be able to freely choose to fly off.  Whilst other parrots, whose feathers have not re-grown, will live in the mango tree, free to climb in and out of their home using ladders that will be placed in the tree.   We will continue to provision the parrots with food, and treat them medically when necessary, and it is for this that we are seeking financial assistance.  Currently it is costing approximately $450/month paying for food and medical costs for the parrots and any donations towards these costs would help enormously.     

Please do return to this blog as we will soon post pictures illustrating the progress of the construction of the Mango Tree Parrot Enclosure. 

Thank you, Felix Lankester

Tags: , African grey parrots, bushmeat, Cameroon, conservation, endangered species, Felix Lankester, pet trade, Psittacus erithacus

One response so far

Category: Bush meat, Cameroon, Chimpanzee, endangered species, illegal trade | Date: Oct 29 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

I just returned from a four weeks leave in the Netherlands and it feels good to be back at the Limbe Wildlife Centre, Cameroon. A lot of things have happened while I was away, like the integration of four infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). It is great to see that the two new infants play with the older two and have become a little bit less dependent on people. Nevertheless they still need a lot of extra care, milk etc., which costs a lot of money. If you want to sponsor milk for our infants, please make a donation. Milk for one infant costs 15 euro per month.

Our frequent readers know the stories of Mbam, who was very afraid of people when he arrived, and Mayos, the four months old baby that needed 24-hour care. When Mbam was still in quarantine he spend a lot of time with Mayos and her caretaker Sandy. Although Mayos is a lot younger then Mbam, she seemed to understand the social chimpanzee rules a lot better then Mbam. We suspect that Mbam has spent a long time with people in a very bad situation. After his quarantine period he moved to the infant enclosure where he met Ilor and Nanga. Just before my leave Mbam was still a bit afraid of these big infants (2 1/2 years old!), but they now play together like they’ve known each other for years.

Mayos has been with Ilor and Nanga in the daytime for a few months now, but now she is fully integrated into the group. She gets an extra bottle of milk during the day and the security staff gives her another bottle late at night. She also needs to sleep for an hour during the day and she prefers to do that on one of the keepers’ laps. She is very confident with the older chimpanzees, more so then Mbam, and she is developing very well. It is great so see that our two new chimpanzees are growing and adjusting so well.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries, Assistant Project Manager

Tags: bushmeat, Chimpanzee, conservation education, pan troglodytes, Pandrillus, pet trade, vellerosus

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized, illegal trade | Date: May 18 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Back in December 2007 we rescued 1220 African grey parrots of which approximately 700 birds were released within a few weeks of their arrival at the LWC.  The remainder of the parrots had damaged feathers, from the glue that was used to catch them or from being purposefully cut by the hunters.  Each of these injured parrots had their plumage treated back in January 2008, with the help of a veterinary team from the World Parrot Trust, and have been recuperating ever since.  Now, four months later, some of these parrots have shown through their ability to fly strongly in the flight cage that their plumage has recovered and so it is time to begin the final release phase.  

 However the program will be different from the previous releases, as, rather than taking the selected birds to a nearby forest to be set free, we have decided to simply open up their flight cage here at the LWC and allow them to fly off in their own time. 

PHOTO: ROOF OF FLIGHT CAGE IS PEELED BACK TO ENABLE PARROTS TO FLY FREE AT THEIR WILL 

The decision to opt for this LWC-based ‘soft-release’ strategy was taken after we saw how well a few parrots who had escaped from the flight cage were doing living free amongst the trees of the wildlife centre.  So the plan is to simply start adding birds to this ‘escaped’ flock and to continue to provision them with food and water so that they can regain their strength and fitness steadily.  The forests surrounding the town of Limbe are only a short distance away so when the birds are ready we hope that they will simply fly off together.  Flocks of up to 40 African grey parrots are regularly seen flying around the capital city of Yaoundé so living in the small town of Limbe should not be a problem for the greys. Today, Sunday 18^th May, the roof of one of the flight cages was peeled back and the first batch of 12 recovered parrots were freed. 

PHOTO: parrots flying free from cage

So far they are doing well and have joined the ‘escaped’ flock that is resident at the LWC.  The sight of a flock of parrots flying strongly through the trees of the LWC is a truly wonderful sight, all the more so when one considers the absolutely appalling conditions in which they arrived in 6 months ago.   

PHOTO:  Parrot flying at speed!

PHOTO: newly released parrots flying high into a tree in the Limbe Botanic Gardens

A special thank you to the World Parrot Trust, Pro-Widlife, the Born Free Foundation, the Animal Divulgation Trust and the Humane Society for all their support with the parrot rehabilitation.  The process is still ongoing and we have a while before we can say that we are parrot free, but we certainly would not be where we are today without this support.  Thank you.

10 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized, illegal trade | Date: Jan 08 2008 | By: admin

The situation with the African grey parrots is becoming critical. Having placed the two seized groups in two rapidly constructed flight cages and having released all those birds that were healthy and had undamaged feathers we felt that we had managed to stabilise the situation. However after a period of about a week when the death rate of birds fell to almost zero we began to find the death rate creeping up again with two or three birds dying each day. The post-mortem findings of all of these birds were consistent with the disease pisttacosis, suggesting that the doxycycline treatment that we had been painstakingly giving in the water was not reaching effective concentrations in the birds. In contrast, the acutely sick birds that we had been treating with our limited stock of injectable doxycycline were all recovering well. Clearly the in-water method is not working. So we have now started to make a mash that we can feed to the parrots and in which we can place the doxycycline. Currently we are trying to encourage the birds to eat the mash, which is not easy as wild parrots are pretty picky eaters, but we expect that after a few days they will begin to eat the mash and we can begin giving the doxycycline this way. Medicating in the feed will, it is hoped, enable sufficient concentrations of doxycycline to be reached in the blood.

The situation is not all doom and gloom though as, on the 6th and 7th of January, we selected 59 birds, that were previously too thin to be released but who had since put on weight and were now strong flyers, for release.

During the pre-release clinical examination of each bird it was noted that all of the birds, including those with damaged feathers that could not be selected for release, had put on considerable weight since they had arrived at the LWC. This is a good indication that the quantity of food that we have been feeding is supporting the large numbers of parrots and is enabling them to gain weight steadily. Considering the emaciated state that many of these birds were in when they arrived it is encouraging to find that they are now looking much healthier and stronger.

Most of the remaining birds will not be candidates for release, despite having gained weight, until their feathers have recovered and so we are now planning to begin the laborious feather plucking process to speed up the feather recovery.

Thank you all for your kind donations for this ongoing saga. Particular thanks to Theresa Siskind who has kindly made a monthly donation for the parrots. This is extremely kind of you. All of your funds have helped us to purchase medications and food and to construct the flight cages. We are currently spending $200US per week on food alone for the birds so please do continue to assist us with your kind support.

4 responses so far