New arrival, Bavo

On Saturday the 1st of August I was in Bukavu at the head office of Coopera (the managing NGO for the CRPL). I was driving along the road with two other staff members when we saw a baboon in a tree in one of the houses. We got out of the car to get a closer look at the monkey and we realized she was tied to a tree. She had no water or food at that point in time, but she looked like she was in good condition. We followed the protocols and called the ICCN (Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature) so that they could follow up on the confiscation.
Within a few hours all of the paperwork was in order and the park ranger went to confiscate the baboon. I accompanied them to show them where the baboon was. The people in the house allowed us into the yard where the baboon was being kept so that we could discuss the issue. The park ranger was extremely professional and calm with the people and explained that it is illegal to have a pet primate. The people asked if we could wait and talk to the owner of the monkey, so we remained at the house for about an hour. In this time, both I and the ranger groomed the little female Olive Baboon, she is about 3 years old. She was very gentile and seemed to enjoy the interaction. The cord around her waist was attached to the tree. She only has about a meter of leeway to move around. The owner did not show up to the house, and eventually the people there agreed that we could take the baboon. She was transported to the office of the ICCN where she stayed for two nights before she was transported to the CRPL.
Upon arrival to the CRPL Bavo (the name of the baboon) was put into the cage with Kalonge (a male Olive Baboon about 4 years old) and an adult female Yellow Baboon, Brandy. Unfortunately, we have extremely limited space at the sanctuary and therefore had nowhere suitable to quarantine Bavo. Therefore the cage she is in is now in quarantine. We do hope that when we are able to finish the forest exhibit and move most of the chimpanzees there, that we will have better facilities and more space for the monkey residents and also more room for quarantine. As it is the sanctuary is overfull, but while we can provide food and medical care to these animals we will continue to accept them as there is nowhere else for them to go. If you would like to help us please donate through this blog. Every donation can help us reach our goal faster.
Andrea

Bavo

Update on Ituri, Uvira, Banro and the baboons

Everything is going well with the introduction of Ituri and Uvira to the four other babies (Maiko, Osso, Fizi and Julius). Last night they also slept in the dormitory with the babies and Papy, the keeper. They all slept well.

Today Banro began to play for the first time since her arrival. She is doing well, and eating very well. She is very quiet, but also likes to explore the garden on her own.



The new baboon cage is coming along nicely. However, in the past two weeks we have seen some aggression between them which has resulted in leg injuries to both Yoda and Kalonge. This new cage we hope will allow them more room to move and hence we hope to see less aggression.



Andrea

Education and new arrival

Recently CRPL started education sessions for the communities around the sanctuary. These are planned to be quite informal to begin with, before a more organized structure can be put into place. The sanctuary staff have completed two presentations, one to the chiefs of the local area and the second to the wives, husbands and fiancés of the staff of CRPL. The idea is to let the local people know what it is that CRPL is doing so they can involve them in the process. The next planned session is for the priests of local churches.

Today we have been informed by the manager of the workers that the wives have formed a ‘wives of CRPL committee’ and are planning on becoming involved with the sanctuary and its running. This is a wonderful outcome of the session. More meetings will be planned with them to discuss how they would like to be involved.

This afternoon a new baby Chimpanzee has arrived to Lwiro Sanctuary. Her very long journey including a boat, small airplane and road travel. It’s estimated that she is between 18 months to 2 years old. She is small and thin, but appears to be in good health. She is also very independent and confident. Her name is Ituri, named after the area from which she was confiscated. Ituri will pass a time of one month in quarantine, before she is introduced to the current nursery group.

Maiko and Osso

Yesterday Maiko and Osso came to Lwiro Sanctuary. Two little girls. They were very tired and scared. They had travelled by plane, car and boat. They were with us at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We carried them into my room, and with a bit of force got them out of the travel cage and put them in the cage they were going to sleep in during the night. I was alone with them in the room and Osso came out of the cage and sat on my lap. I cried for a while. It’s very difficult to understand how people can treat chimpanzees like that. Maiko and Osso have both seen their family being slaughtered. They ate mango and passion fruit and then went to sleep. Today they slept for a long time, we woke them up at eight. We had planned to have them inside in the room for a couple of days, but Maiko was very shivering with cold, so we put them back in the cage and carried them outside to the quarantine cage in the sunshine. There they slept most of the day, scared and tired. We took them back in at four o’clock and put them to bed for the night.

Jeanette

Maiko and Osso

In the beginning of February we heard that two baby chimpanzees had been confiscated near Maiko National Park in North Kivu. And after a lot of paperwork, and quite a bit of money to cover transport cost, they finally arrived at Lwiro today. They are two little girls called Maiko and Osso.

Maiko is a bit over a year old, she has a lot of parasites and her tummy is very painfull.

Osso is under one year old and in better shape than Maiko, but they are both very thin and traumatized.

Jeanette, a zoo keeper from Kristiansand Zoo in Norway is looking after them with the help of Carmen the vet and manager. Jeanette is volunteering at Lwiro for 3 months.

Hildegunn

Good bye Lwiro

The time has come for me to return to England, slightly sooner than planned (usual problem of lack of money!). I have been here for 4 months and enjoyed every second of it. It has been very exciting at times, with the earthquakes and things, it can be hard too, but most of the time it is a very peaceful, simple and fun place. The people I have met working here are very dedicated and the workers at the sanctuary absolutely adore their animals, they work so hard everyday yet are lovely lovely people. Obviously the main attraction is the animals. I have loved to just spend time with them, getting to know each of them individually, and I have some hilarious stories of them to tell, like when Goma ripped off my t-shirt! I have spent Christmas, New Year and my Birthday here, and they will certainly be memorably ones. So a big Thank You to Lwiro and I will see you soon!

Alexa

Kalume

Kalume is about 8 years old and has horrific injuries from when he was captured as a baby by poachers. He had his face smashed in by a machete and has already had two operations, and is waiting for a third, to help sort out his mouth. There may be other internal problems as well as he often gets a bad chesty cough, but as there is limited medical equipment at Lwiro it is difficult to tell. Despite these injuries he is the boss of a group of 7 other chimps at the sanctuary, and has been surprisingly happy and active.
After the first big earthquake at Lwiro all the chimps were very scared and did not want to come down from the roof. Kalume was the same, but after all the others had calmed down a bit, he persisted in staying up high. We thought initially that he may have a cold, but we soon realised that he wasn’t walking well. When he stopped eating we decided something needed to be done, and took him into a smaller cage to keep an eye on him. The poor boy couldn’t walk and was very depressed. Carmen gave him some painkillers and an anti inflammatory and someone sat with him all day to keep his spirits up. As we can’t give a fixed diagnosis with no scanners or x-ray machines, we can’t tell exactly what was wrong with him, but after two days of being spoilt rotten he started to walk and eat again. After a few more days he seemed back to his usual self and we took him on several walks around the sanctuary, though he tried to milk it every so often by crying like a baby when it was time to go back to his cage! We have decided he will be happier back with the others so he will be joining them again soon.

Alexa

Harry and Sally

The only monkeys who were waiting to move into a bigger cage were Harry and Sally, the red tails. They are not overly sociable with other monkeys so are kept separate from them. There was an empty cage where the others used to live before they moved to the new monkey enclosures. We had the floor concreted and waited 5 days for it to set, then came the day for Harry and Sally to move in. Jacques and Kahole had put lots of branches inside for them to jump around on. It was a very easy move, the small cage they both lived in fitted through to door, so they were carried inside in that and let out. Sally took a few days to settle, but Harry loved it straight away! They seem very happy now, and there are no more animals in tiny cages, yay!

Alexa

Welcome the Lwiro primates blog!

Welcome to the blog for Lwiro primate rehabilitation centre.
We hope you will enjoy and come back regularly.
Here we will report big and small stories of the happenings of the sanctuary.

We are employing 18 congolese at the moment, as keepers, cooks, gardeners and sentinels.


And the main caracters in the story is our 30 chimpanzees, and 34 monkeys of different species.



Enjoy,

Hildegunn



If you want to find out what's happened the last year at Lwiro check out awareafrica.blogspot.com