Gorilla Protection

Category: Community, DRC, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Nov 12 2009 | By: tuver wundi

Local people in DR Congo are continuing to vote for the UN Year of the Gorilla project ‘Stoves for Survival’ as the deadline quickly approaches for the end of voting in the World Challenge international competition.

Voting closes on Friday 13 November.

Nobody knows how many votes have been cast, but here in Goma local people are expressing their support for the ‘Jiko Stoves’ project by coming to the Gorilla Organization resource centre to vote online.

People all over the world had the chance to learn more about the project by watching BBC World News last weekend, but sadly not many people in this area have access to satellite tv. However, we hope that the programme raised awareness among international viewers about the issues facing people in the Kivus.

The winner of the global World Challenge contest will be announced on 5 December, and we’ll let you know the result as soon as we know it.

Thank you to everyone who has voted for us so far. There is still time to vote here http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2009-finalists-project04.php

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Category: Community, DRC, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Nov 05 2009 | By: tuver wundi

People all over the world will have the chance to see the full film all about our Jiko Stoves project this weekend when it is shown on BBC World News.

Our team here in DR Congo hosted the BBC film crew when they came to film our fuel-efficient stoves project for the international World Challenge competition for community conservation. The film-makers also went up to see the mountain gorillas who also star in the film.

Our story will be seen by people in DR Congo on Saturday 7^th November at 1630 and on Sunday 8^th November at 0430, 1130 and 1930 (all times are GMT + 2 hours).

It will be shown everywhere in the world on BBC World News. You can check your local timings here http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/Schedules.aspx

We are so happy that people from all over the world will be able to see the difference that our project is making to the local communities here. Families with fuel-efficient stoves are now using on average just 1.5 sacks of charcoal a month compared to four sacks per month before. This not only helps the villagers, but is also helping to conserve the precious forests for our gorilla cousins, and helps in the fight against climate change.

Voting closes in the competition on Friday 13^th November so if you haven’t voted yet, there is still time. If we win, the money would fund the project for a whole year. Vote here: www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2009-finalists-project04.php

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Category: Community, DRC, Press, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Oct 20 2009 | By: tuver wundi

Every day, the residents of Goma come to the Gorilla Organization Resource Centre to cast their online vote for the local Jiko Stoves project, which has been chosen as one of only twelve finalists in The World Challenge 2009.

Local people are backing the UN Year of the Gorilla fuel-efficient stoves project, which is funded by GO in partnership with Aide-Kivu.

Residents have heard about the project from word-of-mouth, and also from Radio Congolese National television (RTNC), which partners the Gorilla Organization for the weekly edition of the programme ‘Cosmos, Our World’.

Many people have been coming to the Resource Centre in Goma to make use of the internet and vote, and lots more people have been voting elsewhere at other internet points. This is a positive demonstration of how this project is very much appreciated by local people, and how they support the fight to save the gorillas from habitat destruction caused by deforestation of the natural habitat of this close cousin.

People are voting for JIKO Stoves here: www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2009-finalists-project04.php

Every voice counts.

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Category: DRC, Gorilla tourism, Kabirizi Family, Rangers, Successes | Date: Oct 09 2009 | By: paula

Having met the Kabirizi family twice I feel as if they are my family so you can imagine my joy when I saw that Kabirizi has another child. that means that Miza, the orphaned baby gorilla we wrote about in “Looking for Miza” about has another sibling!

Look at this beauty!

Thank you Innocent for bringing us this wonderful news. I know that things are still very difficult in eastern DR Congo but the gorillas look quite peaceful thanks to our former CEO Emmanuel de Merode who is now the Virunga National Park warden and his team of dedicated rangers on the ground.

Tags: Congo DRC, gorilla, Innocent, mountain gorilla, Virunga, Virunga National Park

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Category: DRC, Eastern Lowland Gorilla, Gorilla Range States, Grauer's Gorillas, Political situation, Videos, Year of the Gorilla, bushmeat | Date: Oct 02 2009 | By: Daniel

Here’s another of Ian Redmond’s YoG interviews, this time with John Kahekwa at the Kahuzi Biega National Park. The park has lost most of its gorillas and elephants to poaching related to coltan mining and the war which started in 1994, and the absence of their ‘gardening’ activities has led to profound changes in vegetation cover and other ecosystem features.

Go to www.yog2009.org to find out more about the campaign and how to support.

Tags: Elephants, gorillas, kahuzi-biega, mining, poaching, vegetation cover, war, Year of the Gorilla

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Category: DRC, Eastern Lowland Gorilla, Gorilla Range States, Gorilla tourism, Outreach & Awareness, Patrols, Political situation, Rangers, Threats, Videos, Year of the Gorilla, bushmeat, militias | Date: Oct 01 2009 | By: Daniel

Ian is back in the UK, catching up with himself and preparing for his next journey, this time to the concrete jungles of LA, San Diego etc. to fundraise for YoG through a lecture tour.

As the regular reader of this blog will remember, Ian did numerous video interviews and collected other video material. Unfortunately, the files were too large to upload as he went, but we are now receiving them.

One of Ian’s first visits in the Dem. Rep. of Congo was to the Kahuzi Biega National Park, where he interviewed Head Ranger Radar Nishuli on the ever-volatile situation there and on what he thinks of the YoG. Enjoy!

Tags: conservation, DRC, gorillas, Ian Redmond, Kahuzi Biega National Park, range states, Rangers, Year of the Gorilla

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Category: Community, DRC, Successes, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Oct 01 2009 | By: tuver wundi

In just ten seconds online you could help the Gorilla Organization to continue funding a vital project that reduces pressure on precious gorilla forests in DR Congo to preserve the long-term future of gorillas.

Out of nearly a thousand nominations, the UN Year of the Gorilla ‘Jiko Stoves’ project in the area surrounding the Virunga National Park has been selected as one of only twelve finalists in the World Challenge 09 competition.

Online voters simply have to visit www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/2009-finalists-project04.php and cast a vote for the DR Congo ‘Jiko Stoves’ project. It takes only ten seconds and does not require registration.

The area surrounding the Virunga National Park in DR Congo, home to the critically endangered mountain gorilla, is densely populated, with most families reliant on firewood and charcoal for cooking and heating. The collection of firewood can have a detrimental effect on the gorilla habitat, and is also very time-consuming and physically exhausting for the villagers and children involved.

Partnering with local group AIDE-Kivu, the Gorilla Organization launched the fuel-efficient stove project in 2008, producing and distributing ‘jiko’ stoves which reduce the consumption of firewood and charcoal by at least 75%. Families with fuel-efficient stoves are now using on average just 1.5 sacks of charcoal a month compared to four sacks per month before.

The Director of The Gorilla Organization, Jillian Miller, says “The ‘Jiki Stoves’ project in DR Congo has shown proven success in reducing the consumption of firewood and charcoal – which is a huge threat to the critically endangered mountain gorilla. Winning the $20 000 prize money in the World Challenge competition would fund this vital project for an entire year”

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Category: DRC, Gorilla Range States, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Sep 14 2009 | By: Daniel

11^th September           

Greetings, oh followers of the SoG-YoG Blog,

I’m sitting next to a sleeping policeman (an officer of the law, not a speed bump) in the front seat of the Yaoundé to Limbé Guarantee Express bus, hurtling through torrential rain, most of which is being kept out by the windscreen but occasional drops make it through the side windows that need to be open a bit to stop us from misting up.  Cameroon is such a beautiful country, even when it is raining!

My apologies once again for the break in communications.   Long bus journeys, hastily convened press conferences, Ministerial YoG interviews and mini-seminars in restaurants and bus stations have filled every waking moment of late (and there haven’t been many sleeping moments either!), hence the lack of recent postings.   A change in tactics is clearly called for.  Producing long blogs a week after the event is rather missing the point of blogging, or so I gather, so I propose to keep you posted on my movements  more regularly with brevity.  In due course, and as time allows, I’ll fill in the detail, but at least those of you curious to know how the journey is going will be kept up to date.

Let’s take it from my abortive attempts to get an Angolan visa:

Tuesday 1^st September:   Redmond vs. Red tape

In Kinshasa, I was helped to get around by the UNEP Post-conflict office driver.  Even with my Ordre de Mission from UNEP-CMS and a Ministerial intervention via Luanda, the staff of the Angolan Embassy felt unable to issue a visa without a letter of invitation. Telephone calls and emails to our contact in Luanda seemed to indicate one was on its way.  The Gabon Embassy was more helpful and issued one the same day.

Wednesday 2^nd September     

To Angolan Embassy again, asked to wait again (though what for was not clear).   While waiting, chatting to other patiently-waiting people about bus services to Angola led to a YoG interview with an Angolan architect working in Kinshasa.   Technically we were on Angolan soil in the Embassy, and this was to be my only YoG interviewee from Angola.  Rang Luanda again and unable to catch the words, handed the ‘phone to the consular officer, who learned that the letter of invitation had still not been sent yet, which is why it was not in his fax machine…  I was running out of time, and there were no flights out of Kinshasa to any of my target countries, so I packed up and headed for the Beach to cross to Brazzaville again.  There I took a taxi straight to the airport and found a flight going to Pointe Noir on the coast of Congo.   On arrival, the Gabon Airways flight I’d hoped to catch was on the tarmac a few yards away, but it was full and ready for departure, so I’d have to wait until the next flight in the morning.

Read Ian’s previous post here!

Find out more about the Year of the Gorilla and the projects you can support.

Tags: Angola, Congo Brazzaville, conservation, DRC, Gabon, gorillas, Ian Redmond, range states, Year of the Gorilla

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Category: Community, DRC, Year of the Gorilla | Date: Sep 11 2009 | By: tuver wundi

Hello, here is more about the Jiko Kenya and Nguvu Nyeusi stoves used in the Virunga National Park, popularised by Aide Kivu with the support of the Gorilla Organization.

So, how do you use one?

1.  Open the door and direct the opening in the opposite way to the wind direction

2.  Put a small quantity of charcoal into the stove

3.  Light the fire in the usual way

4.  Place the saucepan on the supports

5.  After cooking, remove the embers and extinguish the fire (do not extinguish embers with water, but cover them with the saucepan or use mud or sand)

How can the stoves be used to the best effect for cooking?

Prepare the food to cook before actually lighting the fire to save energy. Calculate the correct amount of water to use to save water. Hard or dry foods (like beans) will need to be soaked in water for four hours in advance. You can use this same water for cooking to save further water.

Large food items will be cut in small pieces (meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes) to reduce the cooking time.

How are the stoves more economical?

The fire compartments are small and made of clay, a material which preserves the heat for a very long time. All of the heat is concentrated on the saucepan so heat is not lost into the atmosphere. The intensity of the heat can increased or reduced by adjusting the direction of the opening depending on the wind direction.

What are the advantages to Jiko Kenya or Nguvu Nyeusi stoves?

The amount of charcoal needed is much less than with other methods (a reduction of at least 55%). The length of cooking time is reduced. There is less danger from billowing smoke. Ashes can be collected and used for other things. The heat is not so dangerous because it is all directed towards the saucepan.

As well as these advantages in the home, the use of these fuel-efficient stoves also promotes the preservation of the forest and fights against global warming.

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Category: DRC, Gorilla Range States, Threats, Western Lowland Gorilla, Year of the Gorilla, law enforcement | Date: Sep 07 2009 | By: Daniel

August 28^th – Imagine you are an ant watching the ripples of a small mountain stream flowing over pebble – that is how you feel looking at giant standing waves of the Kinsuka Rapids, formed as the smooth wide waters of Stanley Pool squeeze through the narrow exit with tremendous force, en route for the Atlantic at Banana. The Congo River is unlike any other in this regard – instead of broadening into a gentle estuary or delta in its lower reaches, this immense volume of water powers through a deep crack in the rock.   

In the foreground, battered lorries are being filled with sand by gangs of men with long-handled shovels.  Kinshasa is witnessing a building boom as stability brings investment, and the massive sand-banks are bit by bit being converted into a high-rise city.  I asked my host Melanie if she would like to say something about the links between fish and gorillas, and with the rapids behind her, she gave a great YoG interview.  “Everything that happens in the forests of the Congo Basin ends up in the river” she pointed out, “and if you lose the forests, you lose most of the fish in the river, and also in the in-shore marine fisheries that feed so many people.  So, to save the gorillas, you save the forests… and so save the fish.  It is all connected.”   What better message for the Year of the Gorilla?  

Any study in a little-known habitat is likely to yield species new to science (usually well known to local people but not yet formally described) but I had heard that Melanie had found a fish so unlike any other that it needed not only a new species and genus, but a new Family. But despite jokes about fishermen’s tales, she admitted it was quite a small fish - exciting news for ichthyologists nevertheless.

By chance, one of the ichthyologists’ neighbours turned out to be Inogwabini, one of Congo’s foremost field scientists, now working with WWF.  He gave me a lift into the WWF offices, which conveniently were in the same compound as UNEP, and he also gave a bi-lingual YoG interview.  Ino had taken part in the census of Eastern Lowland Gorillas in the early to mid-1990s which came up with the widely quoted 1996 estimate of 17,000 (+or- 8,000), 86 per cent of whom lived in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park and surrounding forests.  One of the big questions hanging over gorilla conservation in the DRC is how many of these animals have survived both the coltan boom at the turn of the century (see http://www.bornfree.org.uk/animals/gorillas/conservation-research/) and the on-going occupation of the lowland sector of the park by armed militias who fight to control the lucrative flow of minerals?  

Thanks to the monitoring of 11 gorilla groups in the 600 square km montane sector by ICCN with support from WCS (now aided by a grant from the Spanish Government through GRASP), we know that the number in this relatively well-controlled sector was reduced by half during the conflict, but is recovering.  The lowland sector (ten times bigger) is not yet secure for census work, and the fear is that the decline will be greater than in the montane sector.

Across the Mighty Congo (and even mightier bureaucratic hurdles)

After making the best of these opportunities for meetings and YoG interviews, I tried one more time for an Angolan visa. No luck – if only this honorary Ambassador title came with a diplomatic passport, there’d be no problem and the visas would be free!

Crossing the Congo River by ‘Canoe Rapide’ takes but a few minutes; getting through the various stages of buying a ticket (there are several competing companies), having your bags checked, declaring your currency and avoiding contributing to the daily income of everyone standing within a radius of five metres, while being jostled by muscular stevedores with massive loads on their heads all shouting loudly, can take an hour or more on each side if you don’t have someone to guide you through the ‘protocol’.  It is the sort of busy scene one would love to capture on video, but the mere hint of a camera emerging from bag or pocket would add yet hours to the ‘protocol’ and likely cost an arm and a leg, so you, Gentle Reader, will have to use your imagination!

It was late afternoon by the time I walked out of the warehouses that serve as customs offices on the famous Brazzaville Beach.  My old friend Dr Dieudonné Ankara met me – he is the GRASP Focal Point for the Congo Government and Scientific Advisor for Congo to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), and he was the one who initiated Congo’s proposal to list all gorillas on the CMS Appendix 1 (before that, only Mountain Gorillas were listed), so in a way, the whole Gorilla Agreement and YoG campaign stem from his work.

Taking one of the ubiquitous green taxis that make getting around Brazzaville so easy, we went first to the Wildlife Conservation Society office to meet Dr Trish Reed, a veterinarian working on monitoring ape health who had been at the Entebbe workshop the week before. She had kindly offered the use of a spare room and logistical help for me to get around Congo.  Unfortunately, the timing was wrong – the director of WCS Congo, Paul Telford, was in South Africa with Minister Djombo, seeking investment for Odzala National Park, and no vehicles were heading out to projects. 

It seemed that the chances of my visiting the more remote gorilla habitats in Congo were, well, remote.  Instead, we called the newly appointed Focal Point of the Gorilla Agreement, Mr Florent Ikoli, and he suggested an immediate meeting.   Florent is also the Conservator of the Lésio-Louna Gorilla Reserve where the Projet Protection des Gorilles (PPG) is based.   

PPG is the pioneering collaboration between the UK-based Aspinall Foundation and the Ministry of Economic Forestry, which is rehabilitating confiscated orphan gorillas back into the wild. Its origins go back to the efforts of the late Yvette Leroi, who began rescuing baby gorillas from traders in the 1980s, and who I met on my first visit to Brazzaville in 1989, on an investigation into this trade for  the International Primate Protection League (www.ippl.org).

We drove over to the modest PPG Brazzaville office and I noted the minibus outside, beautifully painted with scenes of forests and gorilla families, clearly used for conservation education.  On the wall inside were posters and leaflets with the equally effective message that ‘baby apes + cash = PRISON’ – with a pair of hand-cuffed wrists to hammer home the point.  This campaign to stop the illegal trade in baby apes is also backed by other GRASP partners (JGI, LAGA and WCS) as well as the Ministry.  It is an essential adjunct to the more widely publicised and photogenic task of caring for the orphans.   To find out more about a related project on Wildlife Law Enforcement (supported by the YoG) for which you can donate through this blog, click here.

Florent gave us a brief summary of the success of the reintroduction work: so far eight babies have been born in the wild, and although sadly two have died, this is not considered unusual for first-time mothers (some studies report up to 40 per cent infant mortality in natural gorilla populations).  If all goes well, this disparate group of gorillas (including some born in Kent at Howletts and Port Lympne Zoos) will be the founders of a new free-living population in habitat that hasn’t seen a gorilla in decades.  Moreover, the communities are fully supportive of the project (perhaps now realising the value of what they had lost) and are already beginning to see benefits from the tourism that the gorillas attract.

As for visiting the site, this time I was in luck. Repairs to a project vehicle should be finished by the next morning, so I could get a lift.  And two groups of tourists were expected over the weekend, so a lift back on Sunday seemed likely too. 

My weekend was set, and I would see gorillas in Congo – just not the ones I still yearn to see up north, around Odzala and Nouabali-Ndoki National Parks, wading in and feeding on water plants while elephants and sitatunga stroll by in the bai.  Next time perhaps?

Coming soon:

29^th – 31^st August - PPG and PALF - Bottle-fed babies and prosecuting the traders

1^st – 3^rd September – Visa purgatory and visible progress towards LSD bushmeat.

Read Ian’s previous post here!

Tags: Brazzaville, Cassiterite, coltan, conservation, eastern lowland gorillas, gorillas, Ian Redmond, kahuzi-biega, Kinshasa, law enforcement, militias, orphans, PPG, range states, reintroduction, River Congo, Sanctuary, Threats, Year of the Gorilla

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