Baraza

Category: Africa, Gorillas, In the News, Uganda, hunting, wildlife, wildlifedirect | Date: Oct 15 2009 | By: Maina

Conservationists are taken aback over Uganda’s re-introduction of sport hunting in selected areas outside of designated protected areas. Conservationists from Nature Uganda and WildlifeDirect voiced their concerns over Uganda’s claim that they have enough wildlife to sustainably practice this consumptive use of wildlife. Ben Simon of AFP has the complete story.

Uganda under fire over legalized big game hunting

By Ben Simon (AFP)

KAMPALA — Outraged conservationists said on Wednesday that Uganda had neither enough game nor adequate control mechanisms to reintroduce sport hunting on animals such as elephant and buffalo.

Animal and environmental protection groups were angered by the Uganda Wildlife Authority’s (UWA) decision to sell shooting licences in a bid to boost tourism revenue.

“I do not believe that Uganda has enough game animals to sustain sport hunting,” Samuel Maina, of Nairobi-based WildlifeDirect, told AFP.

UWA spokeswoman Lillian Nsubuga said population levels had recovered from years of war in some areas and argued that ending the decades-old ban would contain crop-crunching elephants and buffalos while creating jobs.

Maina voiced doubts that the 90 percent loss of the large mammal population during the unstable 70s and 80s had been reversed.

“Sport hunting is thus likely to be unsustainable in the designated hunting areas and there is a likelihood that to sustain this lucrative sector, Uganda will have to extend hunting into protected areas,” he said.

Achilles Byaruhanga of Nature Uganda, a Kampala-based advocacy group, also judged the initiative to be dangerous because it is impossible to know the real strength of big game populations.

“I would want to ask UWA: Where is your data and your information coming from? Just because some animals have moved out of a wildlife reserve doesn’t mean their numbers are strong enough for sport hunting,” he told AFP.

UWA chief Moses Mapesa said that big game hunting was happening already and that the plan was simply for Uganda to benefit from it.

“In the absence of controlled hunting we have had a loss of animals and a loss of potential revenue,” he said.

But Byaruhanga argued that the reintroduction of legal hunting was unlikely to stop illegal hunting by needy local communities or create enough guide jobs to provide a viable alternative.

Maina also warned that Uganda had not proven it had the capacity to control the hunting effectively.

“Hunting-law enforcement is going to be difficult when new hunting blocks are opened. I doubt UWA has enough personnel and machinery to prevent abuse of the hunting licenses and concessions,” he said.

Maina also argued that sport hunting was incompatible with the east African country’s current attempts to enhance its international image as a destination for ecotourism, with gorillas the main attraction.

“Ecotourism and sport hunting are more or less mutually exclusive. Ecotourists do not want to go to places where wildlife is being killed,” he told AFP.

“The growth of sport hunting tourism will give Uganda a bad name as an ecotourism destination and is thus likely to reduce earnings from ecotourism including gorilla tracking,” he added.

Tags: conservation, ecotourism, illegal hunting, Nature Uganda, sport hunting, tourism, Uganda, Uganda Wildlife Authority, wildlife

12 responses so far

Category: Africa, Gorillas, bushmeat, wildlife trade | Date: Aug 10 2009 | By: admin

Dear Friends,

We have exciting news from the  Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project Foundation in Gabon about a successful transfer to the wild of orphaned baby gorillas. This is their press release.

GABONESE ORPHAN GORILLAS SET FREE ON AN ISLAND

Text by Sarah Monaghan, images by SCD B.V.

Gabon, August 2009 - SIX YOUNG GORILLAS, rescued from the illegal bush meat trade, have begun new independent lives on a lagoon island just outside Loango National Park in Gabon.

Staff at the Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) are celebrating after announcing the successful transfer of the six juvenile western lowland gorillas (a species deemed critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List (IUCN)) onto the safe island in the Fernan-Vaz Lagoon.

This is the first step in a reintroduction project that is hoped will allow them to return entirely to the wild and follows a three-year-long ‘rehab programme’ to prepare them for release.

One step closer to freedom

Halfway through the Year of the Gorilla, the transfer marks the beginning of the gorillas’ independence. They have exchanged their human-built shelters for the palm-fringed forested islet where they can now live in relative safety from threats from poachers or other predators. The transfer was supervised by the Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project (FGVP) director Nick Bachand and his team of Gabonese keepers.

“We all felt a hint of sadness as the gorillas left the place where their journey started,” said Nick Bachand, a veterinarian. “But this was instantly replaced with a mountain of pride when we observed some of the gorillas starting to build their own nests to sleep outside overnight.”

Building self-made nests is an important indication, among others, of the young gorillas’ progress during this second phase of their rehabilitation.

Tragic pasts

Each of the six gorillas (three females, three males) varying in ages from two to seven, were orphaned by the illegal bush meat trade.

The oldest male, Gimenu, 7, was rescued in an emaciated state from a Gabonese zoo where he had spent three years in complete isolation.  He is accompanied by Sindila, 4, an abandoned male found by tourists on a river excursion, and Ivindo, also 4, flown in from the Ivindo National Park in 2005.  The youngest female, Wanga, 2, was left on the doorstep of a conservationist’s home in the southern half of Loango National Park while the other two Cessé and Eliwa, 3 and 2, were donated by another great-ape rescue centre in Gabon.

Gorilla orphanage

The gorillas have spent the past two and a half years undergoing daily forest rehabilitation accompanied by their keepers on Evengue Island, located north of Loango National Park.

A small team of local keepers will continue to monitor their progress from a base camp in the central zone of Orique island, where their new home is.

The Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project comprises a Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Programme. All its resident gorillas were rescued after the parents were killed illegally by hunters for bush meat. The purpose of the Sanctuary is to provide a safe home for gorillas that can never return to the wild as they lack the critical survival skills usually taught by their parents in the first six to eight years of their lives.

The younger gorillas are part of its Rehabilitation Programme, however, and have undergone its quarantine and socialisation stages. They now have the potential to be reintroduced into the wild although many challenges and uncertainties remain.

‘Gorilla rehab’ plays strategic role in survival of great apes

The IUCN has identified the use of reintroduction projects as part of a global strategy for the survival of the world’s endangered great apes. The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) works closely with the Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project and focuses wherever possible on reintroduction programmes.

“We have to find ways to restore value to Africa’s forests, and reintroduction places focus on the African wildlife in the African forests,” said Doug Cress, executive director of PASA.

He added: “It’s no good for any of us to aspire to having the world’s largest captive population of chimpanzees or gorillas – even if we are saving lives. That is not conservation and it is not sending messages that can be translated into environmental action.”

Return to the wild

Thanks to a team of devoted veterinarians, dedicated keepers and the support of the international community, these gorillas’ return to the wild in the Gabonese equatorial forest is expected within two to three years.

In the meantime, the project is working hard to raise local and global awareness on issues facing the gorillas, to encourage research that emphasises the needs of the local people, and to integrate responsible tourism, as part of a national and international effort to save the gorilla from extinction in the wild.

The Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project in Gabon is a project of Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) in affiliation with its main eco-tourism partner, Africa’s Eden. SCD has partnerships with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Max Planck Institute, the Gabonese Ministry of Forestry, and the Gabonese National Parks Agency (ANPN).

www.gorillasgabon.com

www.africas-eden.com

For more information

Ms. Tienke Vermeiden

E: tienke.vermeiden@scd-conservation.com

T: +31 26 370 5567

Other interesting links:                                     www.africas-eden.com

www.yog2009.org

www.iucnredlist.org

http://pasaprimates.org/

Tags: bushmeat trade, Gabon, lowland gorillas, orphaned gorillas, release, Sarah Monaghan, SCD, wildlife rehabilitation

3 responses so far

Category: Albertine Rift Project, Gorillas, Rwanda, Uganda, wildlifedirect | Date: Apr 06 2009 | By: Maina

The MacArthur Foundation-funded Albertine Rift project shifted gear on 24 March 2009 as WildlifeDirect organized the first ever wildlife blogger training in Kampala, Uganda. It was revolutionary in many ways. Many of the participants not having blogged before, they were quite keen to learn all they could about this experience.

Victor explains a point

The training was attended by various individuals representing the civil society as well as governmental organizations in environment and conservation during the two days that it was conducted. They included representatives of the Albertine Rift conservation Society, the Uganda Nile Discourse Forum, Makerere university, Wildlife Clubs of Uganda, the Uganda Environmental Education Foundation, the country’s wildlife authority, Uganda Wildlife Authority, the Kikandwa Environmental Association, and several community-based organisations.

The training took the form of a day of lectures and practical activities, the first step introducing the new bloggers to the Wordpress dashboard and how to use it to create a blog post and the second step teaching how to blog well. Victor Ngeny took the trainees through the initial step which was done in an interactive manner allowing the trainees to practice what they learn in real time. No wonder a few of their mock-up blog posts showed up in Baraza and caused a little confusion.

Samuel Maina would then take over the next session which, as interactive as the first one, would teach the new bloggers the elements of a good blog post and how to improve their writing so that they can attract and retain readers. They were also taught how to frame their calls for action such that they were credible and likely to elicit positive response from the readers.

Participants during a practical exercise

Masumi Gudka, who would first introduce each training session, would mostly introduce the new bloggers to WildlifeDirect as an organization and prepare the bloggers for what to some would be a lifetime experience. The participants would also be shown a short video, featuring non other than the Dr Richard Leakey, that explained what WildlifeDirect does.

Amid the tasty teas and open interactions between the training team and the trainees, a new and huge thing was developing. We were building a new community of conservationists from one of the most biodiverse ecoregions in Africa: The Albertine Rift. You can expect to read from the new bloggers we trained soon. Expect good quality posts.

Some of the participants pause for a group photo

From  Kampala, the trainers headed to Buhoma, the southwestern Uganda district where the world renowned Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is located. The experience there was different. Being rural and close to a national park - with gorillas in it - the experience must definitely be so much different from that in Kampala City. That is why I will tell you about this experience tomorrow.

Tags: Albertine Rift Project, blogger, Buhoma, Kampala, training, Uganda, Wordpress

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Category: Gorillas | Date: Apr 03 2009 | By: admin

When Jana Jirátová and her boss Miroslav Bobek visited us from Czech Radio last month we had never heard of ‘The Revealed’ - a Big Brother parody played out by Gorillas in the Prague Zoo. The competitors were members of a lowland gorilla family; Richard, Moja, Shinda, Kamba and others.

The show was odd in so many ways, a TV program done by a radio company, the public were voting on Gorillas- and learning about themselves in the process. The interesting part to us was the link with Gorilla conservation. After 72 episodes, the Czech public did not allow the show to end even though the siverback Richard, had ‘won’ the popularity contest.

The show used 17 cameras hidden in the Gorilla house of the zoo, and captured the ins and outs of gorilla politics, births, deaths and  captivated the imagination of the public, and the show won the prestigious BBC Wildlife “Wildscreen Award”. Public interaction and bringing it to Africa, has made this show even more exceptional.

Of course we leaped at the offer to partner with Czech Radio and bring The Revealed to WildlifeDirect because the project now benefits one of our bloggign partners, the Limbe Wildlife Sanctuary where  live coverage is about to debut. We love the ingenuity behind this idea, and we think you will fall in love with the characters and the project too. Here is a note from the team who have just landed in Cameroon

“In a couple of days, we are setting off for Central Africa. As of April 1, we will start posting reports on WildlifeDirect from our journey to the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon, our visits to local schools where children received our books, negotiations about our future cooperation and, most importantly, from our expedition to tropical rain forests. We have received a unique chance to travel to the forest in the southern part of the Central African Republic and track a troop of lowland gorillas, the only of its kind in the world. We shall see how our plans materialise - but we will do our best…”

So please don’t miss it, log on at 12 noon GMT to watch the life and times of Gorillas in The Revealed live from Limbe.

All donations will support lowland gorilla conservation activities in Africa starting with Limbe

Enjoy! Paula

Tags: Czech Radio, Gorillas, lowland gorilla, Moja, Odhaleni, Richard, The Revealed, wildlifedirect

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Category: Gorillas | Date: Jan 09 2009 | By: baraza

The United Nations have declared 2009 the Year of the Gorilla – and there is a call for actions from everyone to participate in global efforts to save gorillas.

Some journalists are questioning the morality ofsaving gorillas while people continue to suffer in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. When in Rwanda I attended the Kwita Izina Gorilla Naming ceremony – a national event, after which I met a famous doctor who is rebuilding the medical infrastructure of the country. He had been invited to Rwandas exclusive tourism lodge on the edge of the Volcano National Park, where a visitor pays $2,000 per night.  A stones throw away he told me he had been treating a community for common diseases, malaria, typhoid, cholera. The lodge made him very angry he said, because all attention was on the gorillas, not the people who live around the park.  Less than 20% of the proceeds from gorilla tourism trickle down to these communities, some of the poorest in Africa and very densely populated.

He told me about the pitiful health status of people living around the protected areas and asked me how conservationists could promote community conservation when communities were suffering so severely, not only in Rwanda but in Congo, Uganda and even Kenya. He asked me how tourism could promote the image of Masai with their two lower teeth bashed out, a romantic image, a reflection of failure to prevent tetanus or lock jaw, a deadly and painful bacterial infection that causes muscle fiberes to shorten until the jaw cannot open (Listen to Lion Guardian Anthony Kasangas podcast here). Poverty he implied, must not become a tourist attraction.

Then Paul Farmer and I had a huge (friendly) argument in which he two accused me directly of having my priorities completely wrong. I accused him of failing to comprehend that human health and living standards are directly affected by the state of the environment. We didn’t see eye to eye … and I wondered who was being stubborn. The solution is not, and can never be, to simply be to get rid of parks and conservation areas for the sake of giving more people land. In such cases the problems are only delayed, and then exacerbated once the land is once again over utilized. It just does not make sense to me that we should permit people to destroy a national asset that would take decades to recover, just to feed a population for a few days or weeks.  Rwanda is hugely is a tiny country that is overpopulated - even if people are allowed into the few parks it will not allevaite the problem in any appreciable way.

But not everyone agrees. In a recent thought provoking article Alex Halperin reminds us that Rwanda is staking its economy on gorillas. To protect this national asset the authorities go to great lengths to kept the gorillas safe and healthy, mainly by restricting human contact, especially with poor villagers who are not allowed into the National Park to forage for natural resources. So, while the national economy benefits, the local population pays the cost.

In Seatlepi blog Robert McClure asks if saving gorillas in a poor country is sustainable. Read the Halperin article here and tell us what you think.

Oh, and if you haven’t already done it, don’t forget Sheryls birthday gift. Thanks to everyone who has already made a contribution!

Tags: health, mountain gorillas, poverty, Rwanda, wildlifedirect, Year of the gorilla

5 responses so far

Category: Gorillas, enforcement, wildlife | Date: Jan 04 2009 | By: Maina

When rebels loyal to renegade DRC general, Laurent Nkunda, invaded and occupied the Virunga National Park in 2007, most rangers fled. Some 30 rangers however remained behind and continued their work under the new ‘administration’. Late last year, the rebels advanced pushing their front further towards Goma. Rumangabo, the Virunga Park headquarters fell to the rangers after a fierce battle with government forces. More government supported rangers fled. Now the Virunga Park was under what seemed to be total control of the rebels.

A month or so before the rebels seized Rumangabo, Emmanuel de Merode, a Belgian national, had been appointed by the DRC government in order to restore the park authority’s [Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature-ICCN] credibility after the previous director, Honore Mashagiro, was fired and arrested on charges that he had participated in the charcoal and deforestation racket that resulted in the murder of 5 gorillas of the Rugendo family in July 2007.

Emmanuel got working immediately and negotiated an agreement that would allow the government supported rangers to return to their duty stations as neutral protectors of Virunga’s 200 or so gorillas and other wildlife. Emmanuel has started deploying his rangers into the park - which remains under control of rebels - and hopes to have 41 rangers in their stations and re-establish five 24-hour patrols.

One of the priorities for the rangers upon their return was to re-establish contact with the habituated ‘tourist groups’ of gorillas and to conduct a census. Surprisingly, despite 14 months without ‘care’ the gorillas have prospered. There are infants in most of the families so far visited and the final count of gorillas is expected to be higher than the current official number.

The same cannot be said about other wildlife. The hippo population for instance has plummeted from an estimated 30,000 to around 300

The rangers who stayed behind under Nkunda now claim that they are conserving the gorillas better than the government. They have accused ICCN rangers of being corrupt and greedy. They claim that more gorillas were killed when the government was in control than during their time. “The gorillas are safer now than they were before,” Pierre-Canisius Kanamahalagi, one of about 30 rangers who stayed behind, is quoted in the LA Times. “It was during the government control that so many were killed.”

The truth is that mountain gorilla populations have grown in the Virunga. There is even the discovery of a new family. The question is: is it because or despite of the rangers that work under Nkunda?

The ICCN has doubts about the ‘rebel’ rangers’ qualifications and political motives. “These rangers are not fully trained in gorilla-monitoring,” De Merode says in the LA Times report. “They’ve been a little cavalier.”

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, though others were chased away.

The new arrangement where these two groups of rangers will work together is very desirable for the gorillas. The concern is that there is a heavy air of suspicion and second-guessing between the two. Will the good intentions of the two groups eventually win over their suspicions and rivalry? Will the gorillas and other wildlife fare better than before?

Tags: DRC, gorilla, gorilla protection, ICCN, Laurent Nkunda, rangers, rebel

One response so far

Category: Gorillas | Date: Oct 14 2008 | By: baraza

After visiting gorillas one can’t help wanting to know more about the individuals

I found the family photo of the Amohoro group in Rwanda that I visited and wrote about in June on the IGCP website.

This is the family album of the Amohoro Group. A google search reveals that many people have visited this group like  Mike Johnson who has some incredible photos of his visit on his blog here and Chris Will is in his spectacular photo album of the same group.

Have a  look at their photos and mine below, see if you can identify anyone from their unique nose prints.

This as an adult female - she had a new baby

How easy/difficult is it?

Tags: Amohoro, IGCP, mountain gorillas, noseprints, Rwanda

2 responses so far

Category: Emergencies, Forests, Gorillas, Trade, wildlife | Date: Oct 10 2008 | By: baraza

We are all been glued to the depressing headlines every day about the housing crisis, economic credit crunch, collapsing banks. On the bright side we are witnessing an unprecedented level of global cooperation to manage bailouts and rescue packages to save the worlds’ economies.I don’t think I’m alone in wondering how come we couldn’t get this level of cooperation on global climate change. Surely it is having an even greater impact on global economies.

The current financial news focuses on industrial nations of North America and Europe but here in Africa (and I’m sure it’s similar in other developing countries) we are already feeling the impact. We’re experiencing massive inflation which affects us all. Yesterday I heard about a middle class Kenyan family who are now feeding their children on anything that fills their stomach. Although they are a well educated couple, they cannot afford to balance their children’s diet. It’s a vicious cycle – the kids will be undernourished, will perform poorly at school. This will cap their own prospects and limit their capacity to escape poverty.

So, we are reacting to the financial crisis because it affects each of us individually. We approve the bail out rescue packages, and have allowed our governments to take billions of dollars from our taxes to rescue failing financial institutions.

Many environmentalists and conservationists are amazed that we can galvanize global coordination to prevent a global financial crisis; and furious that the same countries couldn’t come together and agree on a rescue package to address other global crises like climate change and poverty in developing countries.

This story appeared today on the BBC website and it stirred me to write this post because while the financial situation may be a global crisis, it is nothing compared to the unfolding environmental crisis . A new report by TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) informs us that are racing towards catastrophic damage to our economies because of what how we are destroying biodiversity and ecosystem services.

What are ecosystem services and how dependent are we on them?

Our very existence is tied to ecosystems.

They clean our water and air; give us fertile soils; provide us with building materials and clothing (timber, cotton); pollinate our crops (bees); store carbon and stop the world from over-heating. The list goes on.

33 Billion - the annual value of these ecosystem services in US Dollars

16 Billion – the annual value of the global economy

In this study by Robert Costanza and others  of 17 ecosystem services in 16 biomes, the value of ecosystem services that are not already captured in economic markets is US $15 – 54 Trillion (that’s twelve 0’s!) with an average of US $33 trillion. They emphasize that this is a minimum estimate. To put this into perspective remember that the Global economy is worth about US $16 trillion – half of what nature gives us for free.

To make this real, consider pollination services – without pollinators like bees, we would have virtually no vegetables and of course no honey! The value of pollination of our commercial crops is estimated to be US $216 billion every year. We can survive without bees, of course but imagine if we had to do all that pollination by hand!

It is this value that we do not capture in our economic evaluations. These ecosystem services are considered free public goods! There are no markets and no prices. We simply don’t count them in our national economies and they don’t feature in our economic planning.

We are trashing our ecosystems and losing a host of free services

By 2050 11% of the natural areas remaining in 2000 could be lost to agricultural expansion, the expansion of infrastructure, and climate change.

Almost 40% of the land currently under low-impact agriculture could be converted to intensive agricultural use, with further biodiversity losses

60% of coral reefs could be lost - even by 2030 - through fishing, pollution, diseases, invasive alien species, and coral bleaching due to climate change.

And climate change is exacerbating this problem.

What are the global financial implications?

In an interview here, the lead author of the TEEB report Pavan Sukhdev warns that “the fisheries that are basically going to die out in 40 years time don’t just mean $80 to 100 billion worth of lost fishing income, but also lost protein for the world’s billion poorest people”.

Nearly one-third of the world’s fisheries are severely depleted, and some have suffered complete collapse, such as the Grand Banks cod stocks off Canada’s eastern coast. If current trends continued, we will have no commercially viable marine fisheries left within fifty years.

The loss of biodiversity will have serious repercussions on the world’s economy. The TEEB report predicts we are losing forest ecosystem services at a rate of between $2 trillion and $5 trillion per year. This is the combined value of their services, including cleaning water and absorbing carbon dioxide. The situation will worsen with time as our natural stock is depleted, and we lose the services they provide. It’s a little like losing the interest from an investment, as you eat into the capital. Except that the value of the services a forest provides, is worth many times what we would make if we were to chop down the timber and sell it on the open market.

We tend to undervalue things that we get for free.

We understand the value of those things that we spill our sweat for. The TEEB report suggests that we have flawed economic analysis and we’ve been making policy mistakes. Because environmental services are ‘free’ their loss often is not detected by our current economic incentive system, losses due to deforestation, unsustainable harvesting, habitat destruction etc will continue unabated. To add salt to this wound, the world’s poor are most at risk from the continuing loss of biodiversity, as they are the ones that are most dependent on the ecosystem services that are being degraded.

How big is the problem?

Between 1900 and today we have destroyed 50% of the worlds wetlands. In addition 30% of the our coral reefs are damaged and 35% of our magroves deforested. Extinction rates are now 1000 times greater than they should be and the IUCN states that 70% of the worlds plants are in jeopardy. This is already affecting food, water and health. By 2050 7.5 million square kilometers be lost – that’s the size of Australia.

The TEEB report suggests that the cost of the loss of biodiversity today dwarfs the current financial crisis and that we urgently need a rescue package for environment.

You can read the full TEEB report here or the executive summary here.

Bailing out ecosystems

We know that our very well being is totally dependent upon these “ecosystem services” and that we are hurtling towards a crisis, and yet we are not even talking about any sort of rescue package for ecosystems. No one has dared quantify how much that would cost us.

However, the TEEB report warns that if we do not adopt the right policies, the current decline in biodiversity and the related loss of ecosystem services will continue and even accelerate. Some ecosystems are likely to be damaged beyond repair. With a “business as usual” scenario, by 2050 we, or our children and grand children will be faced with serious consequences.

I agree with Corey, the TEEB report is “Yet more evidence that we have to stop the extinction crisis“

Although it sounds horrendous, we mustn’t see this situation as hopeless. Ecosystems are far more robust than banks and economies. If we lose millions of dollars in ecosystem services by chopping down a forest, we can recover that value with a relatively small investment in forest restoration.  It’ll take years but nature also has her own inbuilt repair mechanisms. We can help her to speed up the recovery by planting, protecting and managing the restoration.

Here’s an example of what can be achieved after only 30 years of forest restoration in Africa.

Tree planting with nitrogen fixing casuarina after open cast mining has stripped all the surface soil and rock at Lafarge in Mombasa Kenya

30 years later the restored ecosystem provides many services - cleaning water, producing fish, carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, recreation and income generation. It is a global showcase and should be replicated and scaled up. You can see more about this amazing place here

Tags: biodiversity, rescue plan, TEEB report, wildlifedirect

3 responses so far

Category: Emergencies, Gorillas, National Parks and protected areas, WildlifeDirect news, wildlife | Date: Oct 09 2008 | By: baraza

We have been following the alarming developments in Eastern Congo on the Gorilla protection blog and here we bring some of the latest reports on BBC here and from the United Nations official site

There is additional inforamation at the UNITED NATIONS Monuc website here Oct 8, 2008 - The Democratic Republic of Congo’s envoy to the United Nations called Wednesday for an urgent UN Security Council meeting to discuss what he called an “imminent” Rwandan attack on the eastern DRC city of Goma.

Speaking to AFP, Atoki Ileka said DRC authorities had “observed concentrations of Rwandan troops in the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi,” and that this suggested that an attack on Goma, located just across the frontier, was “imminent.”
In an earlier statement, the United States has responded angrily to Nkunda’s recent declarations in this statement from the US Department of State

“The United States condemns and rejects the statements made by General Nkunda, leader of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), claiming the CNDP intends to overthrow the elected and universally recognized Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (GDRC). The U.S. calls on the international community to support the GDRC as it works to consolidate its democracy and capacity to govern justly its entire territory. The U.S. opposes all those who seek to foment instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Goma Agreement and the Nairobi Communiqué remain the only true viable framework to bring stability to eastern Congo. The signatories should respect their commitments and implement them swiftly. All concerned parties should also respect the current cease fire and move quickly to disengage their forces in accordance with the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (MONUC) Global Disengagement Plan. The U.S. applauds MONUC for its efforts to stabilize eastern Congo and calls on all parties to cooperate with those efforts. Conflict between the CNDP and the DRC Armed Forces only detracts attention from resolving the root problem causing instability in the region posed by the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR), the Interahamwe, and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The U.S. remains committed to supporting the GDRC and the people of the Congo to ensure a strong, democratic state, free from all illegal armed groups. At the October 3rd UN Security Council meeting on DRC, the U.S. condemned statements made by Nkunda and called for the improvement of MONUC capabilities to better carry out its mandate. The U.S. will continue to work with the DRC and the Great Lakes countries both bilaterally and through the Tripartite Plus process to strengthen regional cooperation and build a stable and prosperous region.
The U.S. will work to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in eastern Congo and elsewhere”.

Tags: CNDP, Gorillas, MONUC, Nkunda, rebels, Rwanda, Virunga National Park

3 responses so far

Category: Gorillas | Date: Oct 06 2008 | By: baraza

Jenny, a 55 year old gorilla has died at Dallas Zoo in early September. She was an old gorilla, and died of a stomach tumor (actually she was euthanized because the tumor was inoperable).  In the wild gorillas don’t live much beyond 30 so Jenny had along life, yet it still feels sad and this story is getting wide coverage. It is the second death of a gorilla at the Dallas Zoo in a month.

Jenny who has her own Wikipedia page is a western lowland gorilla and was born in the wild and was acquired by the zoo in 1957. She gave birth in 1965 to a female named Vicki but never conceived again. Vicki was sent to a Canadian zoo at age 5. There are four other gorillas at Dallas Zoo.

Just last month, another gorilla at the zoo, 43-year-old Hercules, died after undergoing a medical procedure for spinal disease and in 2004, Dallas police shot and killed a 13-year-old gorilla named Jabari at the zoo after it jumped over a wall, bit three people and snatched up a toddler by his teeth. The enclosure was remodeled and the city paid a fine to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Should Gorillas and other apes be in zoos?

There are about 360 gorillas in North American zoos. I love zoos and think that they play an important role in education and awareness, but somehow it seems wrong to keep apes in zoos. We would never imagine keeping a human in a zoo - so why do we keep our closest living relatives in them? It must be like a prison for gorillas, chimps and other intelligent animals. You just have to google gorilla images to see the deplorable conditions that most zoo apes live in, check out their expressions, and see how sad they look. Gorillas are one of the mian attractions at the Dallas Zoo which recieved  670,084 visitors last year alone. The entrance fees would have generated almost $4.7 million.  I wonder how much of this goes back into conservation, to the places where these endangered animals were taken from so many years ago?

Today we also recieved the alarming news that gorillas are the latest victims of the tainted milk scandal in China that has killed four human infants and left more than 50,000 ill. The two gorillas from Hangzhou Wildlife World in the eastern province of Zhejiang, aged one and three, had been fed with milk powder made by Sanlu Group, the company associated with the contamination scandal. Both gorillas are showing the early signs of kidney stones.

Tags: Dallas Zoo, Gorillas, Hangzhou Wildlife World, melamine, western lowland gorillas

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