Gorilla Protection

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 30 2008 | By: paula

From PASA:

Izan, a male Western Lowland gorilla that became an international symbol of illegal trade and African heritage as part of the so-called “Taiping Four,” died December 26 at the Limbe Wildlife Center in Cameroon following a lengthy illness.

An autopsy was performed following Izan’s death, and it is hoped laboratory tests in Europe will provide answers as to the cause. It is believed that stress and a lack of immunity to endemic pathogens may have contributed.

“We are all deeply saddened by the passing of Izan and our hearts go out to the staff of the Limbe Wildlife Center, which battled mightily to save him,” said Doug Cress, executive director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA). “Gorillas are fragile animals that are extremely susceptible to stress, and it could be that the ordeal of Izan’s original capture from the wild and his subsequent travels left him vulnerable.”

The Taiping Four gorillas were one male and three females that were illegally captured as infants from the wild in Cameroon in 2001 and smuggled across the border to Nigeria. From there, the gorillas were transferred under forged CITES permits to the Taiping Zoo in Malaysia. After the deal was uncovered, the Government of Malaysia confiscated the gorillas and sent them to the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa – despite repeated requests from the Government of Cameroon for the return of the gorillas.

In support of Cameroon’s request, a consortium of animal conservation and welfare organizations lobbied aggressively for the repatriation of the gorillas, and the Taiping Four were sent to the Limbe Wildlife Center in late 2007. Their return was viewed as a national victory for Cameroon against the international wildlife trafficking menace that continues to threaten the species’ survival.

Last June, Oyin, another of the Taiping Four gorillas, died from intestinal problems similar to those that plagued Izan.

Although the Taiping Four gorillas joined Limbe’s 12-member gorilla social group within months of their arrival in Cameroon, Izan was noticeably more shy and susceptible to stress than the others. He first became ill in July, and ultimately required treatment four times over the next five months just to maintain his health.

Limbe officials were in constant contact with primate health experts in Africa, Europe and North America throughout Izan’s illness and treatments.

“This is a terrible loss for us all,” said Felix Lankester, manager of the Limbe Wildlife Centre. “We did absolutely everything we could to save Izan and uncover the source of his illness, but by the end he was just too weakened to recover. We shall miss him very much.”

Added Lankester: “The initial findings from the necropsy of Izan were similar to those found in the necropsy of Oyin, suggesting that there could be a common cause to these two deaths. We shall be sending tissue samples to labs in an attempt to ascertain the cause.”

PASA was formed in 2000 to unite the rescue and rehabilitation facilities across Africa that care for chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and literally thousands of other endangered primates. For more information, please contact PASAapes@aol.com or visit www.pasaprimates.org.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 18 2008 | By: paula

If peace is restored in Congo it will benefit everyone including  Gorillas. This new film may just help

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Ben Affleck and Mick Jagger teamed up on Wednesday to launch a short film called “Gimme Shelter” drawing attention to the plight of Congolese families driven from their homes by a decade of war.

The film focuses on the plight of families forced to flee the fighting, among an estimated 1.3 million displaced people in Congo, according to the U.N. refugee agency. The film will be distributed online at www.unhcr.org as well as on television and in cinemas.

“I hope this video will help highlight the plight of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people and also the thousands of innocent people who are needlessly losing their lives there,” Jagger said in a statement.

Jagger and the Rolling Stones donated the song for the campaign to raise money for emergency humanitarian assistance kits that contain jerry cans, kitchen sets, thermal blankets, sleeping mats, mosquito nets and plastic sheeting needed for construction of shelters.

Tags: Ben Affleck, crisis in Congo, DR Congo, gorillas, Mick Jagger, wildlifedirect

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 14 2008 | By: paula

The Virunga National Park website has released a video of Miza (Mutazimiza) the baby gorilla orphaned last year during the attack on the Kabirizi family, and star of our book Looking for Miza which is her story about how she survivied the ordeal. After 14 months of conflict it is a huge relief to see that she is doing so well.

Meanwhile the ICCN rangers have joined rebels in the gorilla sector of Virunga National Park - the early progress is reported by Edmund Sanders in the Los Angeles Times

“Rebels and government officials tentatively agreed for the first time last month to work together in the gorilla sector. The agreement came a month after rebels seized the park’s headquarters in nearby Rumangabo.

As he recently resettled into his office at park headquarters under the new arrangement, De Merode said he hoped to dispatch 41 park rangers to join the 30 who already work in the gorilla sector. He also planned to re-establish five 24-hour patrol posts and resume formal surveying of the families.

But it remains unclear whether the government and rebels will be able to set aside their differences.

Park officials questioned the qualifications and political motives of rangers who stayed behind.

“These rangers are not fully trained in gorilla-monitoring,” De Merode said. “They’ve been a little cavalier.”

Government officials pressured all but one international conservationist group to suspend their work with the gorillas after the rebel takeover and discouraged tourism, saying the proceeds would fund the insurgency.

“They said I was a rebel,” Kanamahalagi said. “They spoiled my name.”

Park officials also have accused the rebels of attacking some rangers, often because of their ethnicity. Tutsi rangers, who are part of the same ethnic group as rebel leader Nkunda, were allowed to remain in the park, some say, although others were chased away.

“The risk was I would be killed,” said Innocent Mburanumwe, head of gorilla monitoring, who fled after the rebel takeover. He said rangers who tried to return were robbed and attacked.

Park officials also have accused rebels of killing and eating of two gorillas last year.

Rebels contend that their soldiers are too disciplined to ever hurt gorillas. They accuse park officials of corruption and mismanagement, saying they exaggerate the threat to gorillas in a bid for international support.

“They need to lie for their fundraising,” said Babou Amani, deputy spokesman for Nkunda’s movement, National Congress for the Defense of the People.

He said control of the gorilla sector fell into the rebels’ lap during an offensive to seize strategic land near the Ugandan border. But he said they took the responsibility seriously.

“For us, gorillas are worth more than diamonds,” Amani said.

To demonstrate their commitment, rebels have been organizing visits, a kind of guerrillas’ gorilla tour for journalists and others. A recent trip suggested that rangers are well-intentioned, if not always well-trained.”

Meanwhile, help has been proposed for orphaned gorillas.  A group of international conservation organizations is building a center to rescue, rehabilitate and reintroduce orphaned gorillas back into the wild.  The sanctuary will cover 150 hectares near Lubero in the northeastern corner of Congo and will cater for up to 30 gorillas.  The center $300,000 center will cost 100,000 to run each year,

To finance this U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development have put up some money, and so has The Walt Disney Company, which operates a number of animal parks in the United States and promotes conservation. Hopefuly lasting peace can be achieved in the region to make this center a success. Read more about it here

Tags: gorillas, ICCN, orphans, Virunga National Park, wildlifedirect

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 11 2008 | By: paula

We’ve been closely monitoring the talks in Nairobi over the last three days. News agencies are stating that the talks have stalled, our contacts have told us that the problem is indecision by CNDP - it seems that the representatives are unable to make decisions on behalf of Laurent Nkunda. What a waste of time!

Meanwhile the United Nations have published  a report  implicating that both Rwanda and Congo have been supporting rebels.  Rwandan government and army has been found helping the CNDP - the report alleges directly involvement in the hostilities, recruiting of child soldiers, supplying artillery and even holding bank accounts for rebels. The report even claims that UN monitored phone calls between Kagame and Nkunda.

Rwanda  of course denies any involvement in the CNDP. In an interview on BBC today, Rwanda’s ambassador to the UN, Claver Gatete, denies any role of Rwanda but that as a democratic nation anyone can have a bank account in Rwanda, and he also claims that the arms that the CNDP have are not supplied form Rwanda, but are ‘found on the ground’ when they take villages and towns.

The report also claims to have evidence of the Congolese army of supporting the Rwandan Hutu militia in eastern Congo which includes some Hutus accused of carrying out the Rwandan 1994 genocide. It names foreign companies that have benefited from the FDLR through access to mines, and recommends that sanctions be imposed against them and individuals named in the report.

While there is a lot of talk going on but many are questioning the political will by nations to intervene and halt the cycle of violence.

Tags: Congo, crisis in Congo, ICCN, Rwanda, Virunga National Park, wildlifedirect

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 09 2008 | By: paula

Talks have begun between representatives of rebel forces fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and delegates from the Kinshasa government in Nairobi, Kenya. The discussions mediated by Olusegun Obasanjo (former president of Nigeria) hope to bring an end to fighting between the the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the army that has displaced about 250,000 people since August. Neither Kabila nor Nkunda attended the talks.

On Friday, the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda agreed  to launch military operations against armed groups operating in Congolese territory as early as 2009. MONUC the United Nations mission in the country will also provide troops. But in response Hutu rebels operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo warned that any attempt to disarm their forces could spark a “long and dreadful war.”

In a related development, the EU declined to send additional troops to Congo because though the troops are urgently needed, the countries fear that “expanding commitments in Afghanistan mean that they have no soldiers to spare for other UN missions, such as the DR Congo”. But Belgium seems to be warming to the idea reports Radio Okapi. The Belgian ambassador de Gucht says Belgium is canvassing the EU to send a special force to eastern DRC.

 Meanwhle 71 rangers and their families from Virunga have sough refuge in IDP camps in Uganda following the latest conflict in North Kivu. Their situation is poor and they are surviving on rations provided through online donations.

Tags: Belgium, CNDP, Congo, DRC, ICCN, Nkunda, Virunga National Park

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Category: Community | Date: Dec 06 2008 | By: paula

In an effort to protect mountain gorillas in the Mgahinga and Bwindi national parks, a bee-keeping project has been initiated by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP).

The major objective of coming up with a project of this nature, is to benefit all the communities in the vicinity of these two national parks in Uganda. This strategy aims at curbing down poaching.

Read more about this innovative approach by IGCP here

It’s amazing that such a small creature can help save one of the largest mammals.

Tags: Bees, Bwindi, community conservation, honey production, IGCP, Mgahinga, Mountain Gorillas

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Category: Kabirizi Family | Date: Dec 05 2008 | By: paula

Its amazing that the ICCN are able to conduct a gorilla census sin Vurunga National Park despite the continued conflict that is ongoing (even though most news agencies have tired of telling that story apart from Bloomberg who reports cooperative efforts between Congo and Rwanda).

Diddy at Bukima camp last year when he found Miza

Diddy and Innocent have revealed that not only have they found most gorilla families intact, but that there migraitons, and importantly, there have been some births. We are still waiting to hear about Miza and look at her photos. Her sister Mivumbi who rescued her when she was orphaned, has had an infant of her own. If you haven’t got it yet,  the childrens book Looking for Miza is a perfect Christmas gift for any child or adult.

Miza was orphaned last year and it was feard she was dying

Read more about the exciting survey and watch the videos from the field here

Tags: Diddy, DR Congo, ICCN, Innocent, Kabirizi, Miza, mountain gorilla, mutazimiza, Virunga National Park

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 04 2008 | By: paula

Well, if you haven’t bought your Christmas presents yet, please consider buying a lovely gift certificate for your friends or loved ones. Just click on the Gorilla!

Tags: Gift Certificate, wildlifedirect

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 03 2008 | By: paula

Two good things to report about gorillas today.

First, twins were born to a mountain gorilla in Uganda. It’s an extremely rare event and hopefully a good omen (if you believe in that sort of thing).

Secondly Jane Goodall is  lending her voice to gorilla conservation.

“Renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, famous for her work with chimps, called conservationists around the world to raise awareness of the problems faced by gorillas.

“It is time for us to pool all of our resources toward saving these magnificent creatures (and toward) ensuring a future for this close cousin of humankind,” she said.

The last decade has seen a steep drop, from 17,000 to 5,000 gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while Mountain Gorillas in the Great Lakes region number only 700, UNEP said. The main threats include hunting for “bushmeat,” a prized delicacy in western Africa, as well as logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and armed conflict, notably in DR Congo.

The UNEP is holding conference on the plight of endangered migratory species to coincide with a forum in Poland of the UN climate change convention”.

Read more on the Telegraph here 

Tags: gorilla, gorilla Twins, Jane Goodall, Mountain Gorillas, Ugada, wildlifedirect

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