Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Uncategorized | Date: May 06 2008 | By: admin

Takwai is our latest arrival. She was brought to the Limbe Wildlife Centre on 30th April. She is a mona monkey of around 6 weeks old and upon arrival she weighed 345 grams. A hunter in Takwai forest killed her mother and brought it to a village. A woman who works for a Cross River gorilla conservation project took care of her for two weeks, until she had the possibility to travel to Limbe.

We feed Takwai baby milk and banana. The banana needs to be soft, so we put it in a syringe and give it straight in her mouth. Still she manages to get banana all over her hands and face.

As she also needs food during the evening and early in the morning I take her home after work each day. At home she runs up and down on the cough and jumps from me to my husband and back. Last year we had a baby red-eared guenon, Ebo, and it is interesting to see the similarities and differences. They both like to put things in their mouth and they love it when you tickle their belly, just like human babies. But Takwai is much more mobile then Ebo was at the same age. She jumps farther and is also a lot braver. Ebo did not leave the couch until she was a few months old, but Takwai has already made it to the table once. There could be individual differences of course, but this difference corresponds with the general difference between the two species: the red-eared monkey being shy and secretive, while mona monkeys are rather bold.

Takwai seems to be very happy with her situation. In the daytime she has her own large cage and the keepers make sure she has everything she needs. In the evening she comes home with me and then she sleeps through the night, from 9pm to 6 am.

Best wishes,
Simone de Vries
Assistant Project Manager

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: May 03 2008 | By: admin

here are those pics I promised.

Regarding your question, Theresa, yes we have tried growing the aframomum and currently have an area of the project set aside for growing it. However it grows slowly and, as you can see from the amount we have harvested in the back of the pick up, we need far more than the space at the project can possibly grow. Consequently we have to send missions to the mountain to sustainably harvest it from areas of forest where it is growing in abundance.

You also asked about Ndok the drill with a broken arm: well her arm healed well and she is now out of her cast and happily living with Tiko, the young male, in quarantine. They are due to leave quarantine next week to begin their introduction to the main drill enclosure. So all is going well there.

You are correct the African grey parrots rehabilitation is coming to an end and their feather regrowing phase is due to be up at the end of May. Already we are seeing quite a few good fliers in the flight cage. Plus we have had a few escapes (parrots are very good at chewing through chain-link, especially the weak type we get here in Cameroon), most of which we have been able to return to the cage, however some of the escapees were able to fly and could not be caught. These 8 birds have since formed a release flock of their own and now live in the trees around the project. We still provision them with food and water and they can often be seen sitting on top of the flight cage chatting away with their captive friends. This accidental release has been so successful that, rather than taking parrots to the nearby forest to let them go, we are considering simply letting them out to join this flock when we see that they can fly well. As the parrots are now familiar with their surroundings and the flight cage they will probaly not fly off immediately, which means we can monitor their progress and provision them with food and as they fly around the project their fittness will slowly improve until the flock is ready to fly off to the forests surrounding Limbe. This is called a ’soft-release’ and is a much better way to release animals that have spent some time in captivity as it enables you to monitor the released animals’ progress, and recapture any that are looking like they wont make it.

Keep your questions coming and thanks for the support.

Felix Lankester

2 responses so far

Category: Felix Lankester, Uncategorized | Date: May 02 2008 | By: admin

March and April were very busy months for us all at the LWC and we were not able to update this blog as often as we would have like to have done. However despite this our readers have continued to generously support our ongoing work. Many thanks to Theresa S, Lucia C, Muriel T and Judd O’s who all made donations. A special thanks to the Animal Divulgation Trust (Italy) who made another donation of $250, and a huge thank you to Peter F. who dug very deep and pledged $750.

Thank you to everyone. Its nice to know that people are out there reading the blog.

Best wishes,

Felix Lankester and Simone de Vries.

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 06 2008 | By: admin

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

7 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Apr 02 2008 | By: admin

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

2 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 09 2008 | By: admin

I would like to take this opportunity to specifically thank the Animals Divulgation Trust who have very generously made three donations totalling $741 to be used to assist with the care and rehabilitation of the African grey parrots. The funds have been received and are being used, as promised, to help care for, feed and medicate the remaining parrots during their protracted stay at the LWC whilst their feathers regrow. We can not do the work that we do without such generous assistance and we would like to thank all the members of the ADT for their support.
I would also like to thank all of the individuals who have made donations through this blog site recently. I have been away but have been monitoring the site and have been very happy to see how many kind people have made donations. Thank you all.
Felix Lankester
Project Manager

One response so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 05 2008 | By: admin

I am sorry I have been silent for so long, but I had a problem accessing the weblog. As some of you might know the situation in Cameroon has been prety bad last week, with strikes, roadblocks and riots, but everything is back to normal now. It was a bit difficult to get all the food we needed for the animals, but we managed.

In response to an already old reaction on this weblog I would like to explain a bit more about the bushmeat trade. It is true that the people who live in the forests of Cameroon have hunted for bushmeat for many generations. They used traditional weapons and the animals they caught were for their own consumption. As a result the scale of the hunting was small.

Things are different now. Not because of habituation of primates, as this has hardly been done in Cameroon. Instead, hunters now have access to modern weapons. Secondly, the logging industry has opened up vast areas of forest, by building a network of roads. This makes it easy to transport bushmeat over long distances to cities in Cameroon and even abroad. Hunters and traders make a lot of money in this business, especially when it concerns chimpanzees and gorillas.

As a result many species are in decline. The drill, that has a very small range in Nigeria, Cameroon and on the island Bioko, is critically endangered. Scientists think that there are around 3-6000 left in the wild. Drills live in large groups and mostly on the ground, which makes them a very easy target. This species is completely protected by Cameroonian law, but unfortunately the illegal hunting continues. The arrival of Ndok in the Limbe Wildlife Centre means that a whole group of drills have been killed. This way of hunting on such a small population can never be sustainable.

Ndok will have to miss her family, but with the help of our sponsors we can take good care of her. She is doing really well. The cast has been taken off and her arm is much better now. The swelling is gone and she starts using the arm a bit more. A few days ago we have started introducing her to Tiko, another drill who arrived a few months ago. She is still a bit nervous when she is alone with Tiko, but already making progress.

I think I finally managed to upload a picture of Ndok. The pink on her face is completely gone.

7 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 18 2008 | By: admin

I received a question about the picture of a chimpanzee above this weblog. It is Koto, who has been with us since October 2005. His mother was killed by a hunter in the area of Koto. Koto was kept in horrific conditions, tied by a rope, alone in a dirty room. He was confiscated and brought to the Limbe Wildlife Centre.

Koto is a very affectionate chimpanzee that likes to be hugged. After spending a year and a half in the infants group, he was moved to the group of young chimpanzees. From the first moment he has been doing well there. There is not as much physical contact with keepers and volunteers in this group as there was in the infants group, but Koto is playing a lot with the other chimpanzees and seems to enjoy being in the older group. He is now around three years old so he has grown a lot since the picture was taken.

7 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 15 2008 | By: admin

As Felix is on holiday it now my honour to keep you all up to date about the Limbe Wildlife Centre. I already received a message that says that we received donations from Lucky Press, Giuliano C., Lucia C. and Theresa S. It is really great that you are able to help us help the endangered primates of Cameroon! It is also heart warming to read the reactions to our weblog. Thank you all very much for your support.

Both gorilla Adjibolo and drill Ndokbagengue seem to be growing every day. Our volunteer Roseanna, who takes care of our baby drill, still cannot believe that Ndok’s face turned black over night. Ndok suddenly looks much older. Her arm is still in a cast, but maybe it will come off on Monday. Bolo doesn’t show any sudden changes, but she has gained more than a kilogram since she arrived here. The two of them together drink a lot of milk, but with all the donations we receive we can take care of that.

I wanted to include some recent pictures of the two, but I don’t get it to work.

Around the parrots everything is quiet at the moment. Their flight cages are in a secluded area of the LWC, where the visitors have no access. Their feathers are starting to regrow, but it will take months before they will be able to fly again. We are looking forward to that day, because we will than be able to release them back into the wild.

Simone de Vries

3 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 24 2008 | By: admin

It is interesting how you can be so busy one minute, and then something else more urgent turns up and everything that you were doing is immediately sidelined as attention is focused on the incoming crisis. So it has been since the seizure of 1220 African grey parrots back in November and December 2007.

Since those two hectic days the management, veterinary, animal keeping and construction staff have all had to devote huge amounts of their precious time to cope with this extraordinary parrot situation: building new flight cages, checking each and every parrot, releasing those birds that were fit enough to be released, developing a new feeding regime, designing an edible mash, sourcing antibiotics to combat an outbreak of chlamydophillosis and spending hours and hours each day anaesthatising parrots one by one so that they can have their damaged feathers removed.

Not only have we had to change our entire staff management program to accommodate the situation, but we have all had to learn and develop new skills, as looking after 1220 parrots is not the same as looking after gorillas and chimpanzees!

So a summary of the situation thus far is this:

• Two shipments of African grey parrots were seized by the authorities at Douala International Airport in late 2007

• The total number of parrots being illegally exported out of the country to Mexico City and Bahrain were 1220

• The LWC was asked by the confiscating authorities to care of the parrots which arrived in small wooden crates, live birds standing on the bodies of their dead cage mates

• The LWC placed the birds in a variety of rooms and quarantine cages whilst 2 flight cages to house the birds were rapidly constructed

• All the birds were given repeated health checks, with fit and healthy birds being selected for release

• The daily death toll began to rise with gross pathological signs consistent with the disease chlamydophillosis (caused by Chlamydia psittaci)

• The veterinary team struggled to contain the disease, which has serious public health implications in humans

• The design of a new mash, made from cassava flour, corn and oil, enabled effective in-feed medication to treat all the parrots against chlamydophillosis

• Veterinary assistance and anaesthetic drugs from the World Parrot Trust arrived in Cameroon and work began on aneasthatising all remaining birds to remove damaged feathers

• The beginning of the 3 month recuperation period begins during which time the flight feathers will re-grow, leading to final releases

This diary of events is quite remarkable and exhausts me just reading it. Unfortunately, despite the wonderful achievements thus far, we are still a long way from resolving this issue as we still have hundreds of parrots living in cramped conditions in two flight cages. We still have to divert large amounts of funding to purchase fruit and nuts and ingredients to make the mash; numerous staff have been reassigned to make the food and look after the birds; the vet team still spend many hours each day checking the birds and making medication feeds. The degree to which this issue has affected every aspect of life at the LWC can not be overstated. It has literally consumed us all.

So the costs continue to mount up and the following is a price list of what we are facing on a daily basis, that it would be fantastic to receive help for:

Extra keeping staff $125/month
Food bill $200/week
Medications $100/month
Fuel for vehicle $20/week
Enclosure repair costs $50/week
Gloves and masks for staff $10/week
Wood chippings for substrate of enclosure $30/week
Veterinary costs $50/week

Many thanks for any assistance that can be given to help us deal with this ongoing extraordinary situation.

17 responses so far