A New Ape Orphanage Project
The unrest following the war in the eastern Democratic Republic of the
Congo (former Zaire) has led to the slaughter of a large number of gorillas
in the montane forest sector of Kahuzi-Biega. The recent gorilla census
completed in 2000 revealed that half of the gorilla population had been
killed for meat. Only 130 individuals were counted during the census.
Poachers in Bukavu illegally keep many gorilla and chimpanzee babies.
The park, in collaboration with Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose, researcher
at the CRSN Lwiro and head of the laboratory of Primatology, Department
of Biology, has launched a campaign to search for and confiscate all the
ape babies kept by poachers and is planning to conduct an orphanage project
at Lwiro. We have already received three chimpanzee babies (Pan troglodytes
schweinfurthii). A baby gorilla in a very bad health succumbed after
we had tried our best to rescue him.
The orphanage project started with the three chimpanzee babies at Lwiro
where Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose and his colleagues are looking after
them. Our aim is to keep the babies until they are old enough to live
freely in the forest without specific care. The park accepted to reintroduce
them in their natural habitat when needed.
We received a small donation from GTZ/PNKB-Bukavu for the daily living
cost including food, care and medicine, but it is not enough to fund the
project. We are now looking for support to continue with our orphanage
project. Our hope is that an international NGO dealing with animal conservation
and especially great apes will support us in this task to restore hope
to those threatened animals.
Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose
Dr. Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose has worked in the conservation of great apes in Central Africa for more than 10 years. He joined the IGCP in 2006 where he is the Conservation Science Officer leading the Ranger-based Monitoring Program, and also acting as the Country Representative in Congo.
