Gorilla Protection

Yesterday I attended a meeting with over 60 people - including chiefs, political authorities, the military, community representatives, educational representatives and Virunga National Park representatives - to talk about the park and the preservation of the wildlife. We are aiming to all work together to all jointly manage the resources of our country. It is important to get all parties involved.

Meeting at Kibumba, near Goma

Taking a break…

The meeting was a success and we founded “Convergence for Conservation and Development”, or CONCD, that will bring together all relevant entities to work toward the survival of our parks. Watch this space.

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For the last few days now the Silverback Pilipili and the Solitary Silverback Mareru have been in combat. You will recall that Pilipili was the Silverback who took control of three individuals from Mapuwa’s family just recently after a confrontation (I posted photos of the injuries they sustained). Now it seems that Mareru wants to take control of Pilipili’s group. I will keep you informed of what happens over coming days and send photos also. This is quite common Gorilla behaviour and we will be following events closely.

I am also pleased to report that the newborn continues to do well. Thank you for all the wonderful name suggestions. It was heartwarming. Photos also will come when possible.

We are still looking for the four missing Gorillas also.

This is a photo of my wife, taken last month:

And these are some of my children:

I look forward to your comments!

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Thanks to your generous donations we are in the process of rehabilitating a new vehicle for the Rangers. We purchased this second hand vehicle, and are working on putting in a new engine, a Turbo fuel injector, new front suspension, new tyres… basically a complete overhaul. We order the parts from Rwanda because you cannot find them easily in Goma.

This vehicle will be used solely for Gorilla Protection which means anti-poaching operations, deployment, transporting equipment and sending out rations. A very special thank you to Chris A who made a $12,000 donation which has made this vital acquisition possible and will really help our efforts to protect the Gorillas.

More photos to come as we make progress.

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As you can imagine, we’re very excited about the birth of the Mountain Gorilla on Saturday. This is the first Gorilla to be born since starting the Gorilla Protection blog and we are thrilled to welcome this new addition to the Rugendo family.

Normally the naming of the Gorilla is left to the Park Rangers who track the family, but given all the support that we have had through the Gorilla Protection blog we have decided that we would be honoured if it was left to our readers to make suggestions for a new name.

Keep in mind that it takes a few months until we are able to determine the sex of the Gorilla, but we trust that you will be able to come up with some suitable names.

Technorati : Africa, Congo, DRC, WildlifeDirect, conservation, gorilla, great ape, primate

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We have just learned that a Mountain Gorilla was born on Saturday 17th February to the Rugendo family near Bikenge. The Rugendo family - as you know the families are named after the Silverback - had 11 individuals, and now has 12! This is really fantastic news after all the stress the Gorillas have been under in this area following the rebel attacks last year

We don’t have any photos yet of the newborn - the mother is very protective naturally - but as soon as we do I will post them. In fact, during the first 8-10 weeks the baby will be kept inside the family circle with the mother, while Rugendo patrols and defends his newborn. We will know in a few months as to the gender of the new family member - this is not immediately apparent to the naked eye - and I will post this too.

If you look on the posts below you will see a map that shows where Bikenge is.

I will tell you more in a couple of days, but I really wanted to get this exciting news out!

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This blog was developped during the gorilla crisis to help us protect them. It was incredibly useful. It raised unprecedented awareness in the world media, it built us a large number of supporters and it helped us raise money.

Now that the crisis is easing off, and we can breath a bit, I’d be really interested in any feedback from you on how best we could use this blog to help protect the gorillas.

My main thoughts are:

- to keep people informed on the lives of the gorillas and the efforts of those trying to protect them. Above all letting everyone know when there is a serious problem that threatens to kill the gorillas.

- to enable people to provide direct support to the rangers who are protecting the gorillas

- to give people quick feedback on what we are doing, and also on how we have used the gifts that we’ve been given.

I would like to carry on posting the day-to-day happenings, which include our encounters with the gorillas which are a lot of fun for us. I’d also like to carry on writing posts on what we do to protect them (like the anti-snaring work that we do). I’ll be posting stuff on the work we do with the local communities, gorilla monitoring, and anti-poaching.

I would love to share with the world the incredible lives of the gorillas - their behaviour, their interactions and the rest. Hopefully we’ll have lots of information on the different gorilla families soon and a map of their locations. If you have any ideas on how you would like me to do that, please do post a comment.

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Congo Rangers are now back at the patrol posts of Bikenge and Jomba in the Mikeno Sector in the south of Virunga National Park. You will remember that these are the posts that were looted and the rangers had to flee after attacks from Laurent Nkunda’s rebels last November. So this is really really great news…

This was taken last week… and is now the photo you see on the home page too! I was in a happy mood!

So we have 9 Rangers at Bikenge and 25 in Jomba… we still need to get all the material and patrol equipment to the posts, but this is a very positive step in the right direction. More to come later with photos… Thanks again for all your support.

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I’m going to write a few posts over the coming days that describe some of the key tasks that my rangers and I have to do on patrol. The first is finding and destroying snares. It’s definitely some of the most important work we do.

A snare left in the Gorilla sector near Bikenge

One of the biggest threats to wildlife in Congo (and throughout Africa) are snares. There are many different types of snares, but the worst are wire snares. These are made from barbed wire, electrical wire, fence wire etc. and are laid out like a lassoo in the undergrowth. An animal will walk into it and catch it’s neck, or leg in the snare. They can sometimes take days to die an agonising death. It’s an extremely cruel way of hunting, and can wipe whole forests clean of all their wild animals. The Gorilla sector is littered with snares and we spend many many hours trying to find them to destroy them.

A photo taken by Mark Languy a few years ago of a very young gorillas that lost his hand to a snare

Gorillas are vulnerable to snares, especially the young. You will remember that Karema lost his hand, almost certainly to a snare.

So we spend a lot of our time patrolling the forest looking for snares. When we find them, we destroy them and bring the wires back to the station where we have a huge pile of old snares picked up over the years.

Removing and destroying the snare at Bikenge last Sunday

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Since my last post we have been continuing the patrols in the Mikeno sector of Virunga National Park. The Gorilla families in Bikenge and Bukima are now being followed on a daily basis… but we have still to locate the solitary Silverbacks Ruziraboba, at Jomba, and Mareru, at Bikenge. The Lulengo couple are also missing… So that makes four Mountain Gorillas unaccounted for, 3 of them Silverbacks.

We are desperately trying to find them. As part of the daily patrols we conduct additional searches, but so far nothing. I will keep you posted on events. We are of course worried that they may have suffered the same fate as Karema and the other Silverback in January.

Since all the problems last year, when patrol posts were looted and Rangers forced to flee, illegal charcoal burning has increased in the area. We really need to confront this – the charcoal burners systematically destroy the forest. This another challenge for us, which we are facing daily!

We have also found traps set by hunters and poachers - these people are not looking to hunt Gorillas, but other mammals. However, Gorillas get caught in them too, so we must also look for snares when we are patroling.

But the situation is gradually improving – I am very happy to report. And we even had 4 North American diplomats come and visit the Gorillas the other day!

Thanks again for all your support in protecting these wonderful creatures!

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Mapuwa and his group yesterday

It’s been an eventful day. We searched all day for the missing gorillas from Mapuwa group, and were very relieved to find them with the last remaining silverback at Bikenge, called PiliPili. Two adult females and a subadult male were now with the newly formed Pilipili group.

We’re worried that the fourth, Sebiheri, who is pretty young and is unlikely to be surviving alone in the forest, may have died. It would almost certainly be a natural death, but it saddens us and sets us back.

Mapuwa (left), looking subdued and defeated. Pilipili (right), no longer solitary

Mapuwa’s wounds

Anyway, that’s it. Some good news and some sad news, but we’re really glad to be back to business as usual after weeks and weeks of agony during the fighting. We’re continuing the patrols and will keep reporting on the gorillas and the forest.

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