Yesterday LWC presented the book ‘Gorilla Stories’, which is going to be used in conservation education in all the schools in and around Limbe. The Cross river gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), that lives in the South West Province of Cameroon, is critically endangered, with only around 250 gorillas left in the wild. It is therefore very important to educate the people of this province about these gems in their forests. The book is a tool to discuss the Cross river gorilla, its needs and the threats it is facing.

‘Gorilla stories’ is developed by the Czech Radio, with money that came from their project Odhaleni (Revealed). This gorilla project, which started with a gorilla version of the television show ‘Big Brother’, filmed in Prague Zoo, is very popular in the Czech Republic. Now the Cameroonian students will meet with the Czech Zoo gorillas and will learn about the life of gorillas both in the wild and in the zoo.

The principles and teachers of fifteen schools were present for the book presentation, which was covered by the Cameroonian Radio and Television and some local radio stations. Miroslav Bobek, one of the writers of the stories, and Jana Jiritova, were over from the Czech Republic to assist with the presentation and start the distribution of the books. All school representatives were very pleased with the donated books, which are very nicely illustrated with lots of gorilla pictures. Like everybody in this country, the Cameroonian schools are always struggling to make ends meet, so it is very difficult for them to build up a library. This book donation is for most schools a valuable gift, that can be used in all sorts of classes, from conservation education to comprehensive reading, drawing, etc. The Limbe Wildlife Centre will use the books as well in both the outreach program and the Saturday Nature Club.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager

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Bobendina, or Dina for short, has been eating and drinking well from the beginning, but she was still very quiet in the beginning. After a few weeks she started playing a little bit more, but she only had people to play with. This is why we were both happy and sad when we recently received another baby monkey, a mona monkey (Cercopithecus mona). It is very good for Dina that she has a friend in quarantine, but it means that more monkeys were killed by hunters. The young mona is a male and he is called Ngolle-ngolle, just like the Minister of Forestry and Wildlife. It is a pleasure to look at the two, playing in their enclosure. Ever since the arrival of Ngolle, Dina is much more adventurous. Together they run around, climb the branches and jump on top of each other. It is quite difficult to make a nice picture now, without having at least one of the two move or completely disappear out of sight.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager

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  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

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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

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Earlier this year a fledgling owl was brought in to the LWC by members of the French Army who have a base nearby.  The owl was a Fraser’s eagle owl (Bubo poensis) and it’s left eye was extremely swollen, closed and bruised.  The army cadets had rescued the bird from some children who had been throwing stones at it.  Locally, and in many other parts of the world, owls are associated with witchcraft and as a consequence people are frightened of them and tend to try to kill them if they see one.   

We took the owl in and placed it on treatment and waited for the swelling in the eye to reduce.  After a few days the swelling had reduced sufficiently for the eyelids to open and at this point we could assess the damage to the eye.  Using an opthalmoscope it was clear that the damage was permanent as the retina had become detached from the back of the eye.  Owl’s hunt using their hearing but also rely on sight to guide them through the trees as they fly and only having one good eye would severely handicap this owl in the wild.  Consequently we decided that we would not be able to release it.   

This posed us with a dilemma of what to do with the young owl:  keep him in a cage for the rest of its life or euthanase it?  Not great choices.  Luckily, however, we came up with a third option:  to try to train the owl to fly to the fist in the hope that we could use him for displays whilst educating visitors about owls, how they live and hunt, and how they are not witches in disguise!  At this point, as the owl was to stay, we gave him a name and the obvious choice was Fraser.  

So for the past 5 months our quarantine keeper, Killi Matute and an English ornithologist, Robbie Whytock, have been working together to train Fraser.  The process is quite complicated but Robbie has a lot of experience training raptors and under his guidance Killi and Fraser have slowly developed a very intimate relationship.  Killi sets traps at night to catch mice and rats and then during the day he chops them in to bite sized pieces, weighs them, and at 1pm feeds approx. 25grams of meat to Fraser.  The amount fed each day has to be carefully calculated as if Killi feeds him too little he will lose weight, and if he feeds too much he will not want to fly the next day. It’s an interesting balance and its only through careful daily calculations made by weighing the food fed and judging how Fraser responds each day that Killi has been able to finally estimate what Fraser’s preferred daily ration should be.  Each day since the training began little by little Fraser has become more comfortable sitting on Killi’s fist, feeding from his hand, flying to his fist in a cage, flying to his fist outside with a string attached to his jesse (leather straps attached to his feet), to finally, this week, flying outside to Killi’s fist without a string attached.   

Last weekend Fraser and Kill had their first display in front of a crowd of local children and visiting government dignitaries.  The response that Killi received when he appeared with a ‘witch bird’ on his hand that flew at his command was quite incredible.  However before anybody began to think that Killi was himself a wizard, we described how and why Fraser came to be living at the LWC, how vulnerable owls are and how they deserve protection not persecution.   

The impact was remarkable and Fraser’s story really underlines how at the LWC we try to extract the maximum conservation value from each and every animal that is unfortunate enough to need rescuing.   I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Robbie Whytock for his expertise in training Killi and Fraser.  A great job well done! 

Felix Lankester

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As I have some time now, I would like to tell you about Gah. People who watch the series ‘Going Ape’ will remember the baby chimpanzee that was completely paralysed when he came to the Limbe Wildlife Centre. When his mother was shot he had received bullits in his spine. Only with a lot of veterinary care, physiotherapy and patience of our quarantine keepers, Gah slowly started to move again. First his arms, later his legs, but he will always have a silly walk.

Gah is now almost 4 years old now and a few months ago we decided that it was time for him to move on from the baby group to the youngsters group. Most young chimps make this transition without any problems, but for Gah it was hard. Chimpanzees always play rough with eachother and Gah did not respond well to this. We started the introduction with the smallest chimpanzee: Mbu. She had spent a long time with Gah in the infants group and right away they became friends again. But after that it became more difficult, because all the others just banged on Gah’s head to see how he would respond to that. Having Mbu as a friend did not help, because she was too small to interfere with any of the others. At some point we had to take a step backwards and begin again. Each time we added one chimpanzee to the couple Mbu and Gah and observed how it went. When they were fine for a few days we added another. It took a long time, but the result is that now all the chimpanzees accept Gah as part of the group. Okay, he has a silly walk and does not run very fast, nor climb very high, but he is just Gah. They don’t bother him now very much anymore. Slowly he is developing a friendship with George, who is normally very oriented towards people. George normally spends most of his time sitting in front of the fence looking at the visitors and the keepers. It is good for him too, to have a new friend.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries (Assistant Manager)

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We have called our new chimpanzee Mbam. He is around one and a half years old and in good condition. He does not trust people yet and does not like us to touch him. No wonder after what he has been through. We take shares sitting with him and let him come to us. Today he started licking my hand, so I am sure he will soon come around.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries

Assistant Project Manager 

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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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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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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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