Here in Cameroon, life is rarely predictable. The deputy director of the San Diego Zoo’s research arm, Dr. Andy Phillips, has just spent a week with us discussing progress for the Central African Regional Program and helping us to develop our long-term plans for research and conservation by the Zoo in the region. I took Andy to visit with many of our partners here in Cameroon, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, whose headquarters are in Yaounde, the capital, a good six-hour drive from our base in Limbe.

On the way back to Limbe, after an excellent trip to the big city, we were not alone. The day before, government officials from Ministry of Forests and Wildlife, acting on information received via the Last Great Ape Association, a non-governmental organization specializing in wildlife law enforcement, arrested an animal dealer and confiscated a baby chimpanzee. The chimpanzee was taken to the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Foundation. The next day, we helped out by taking the baby to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, where he will be looked after for the foreseeable future.

The car journey was more chaotic than usual. We traveled on Saturday, May 19. May 20 is National Day in Cameroon, and the whole of the city center was blocked to traffic to prepare for the enormous parades that take place in front of the head of State each year. It took us more than an hour to get to the edge of the city, stopping periodically to ask for directions along the unmarked and unnamed streets; since all the traffic was diverted, we witnessed three accidents before we even left the city!

Throughout, the baby chimp, named Nanga Eboko (the name of the village from where he came), was as good as gold, sitting on my lap, peering out of the car window, and attracting rather more attention than I’d hoped. We soon put up a towel over the window as I didn’t want people to think that we were interested in “buying” chimpanzees. Nanga slept fitfully, and I inspected him carefully. He had a broken, or at least semi-healing, right leg, and two prominent lumps, one just below his rib cage and one on his left leg. Imagine my horror when I realized these lumps were shotgun pellets. This means that Nanga was probably with the hunter or trader for more than a few weeks before he was rescued.

None of that seemed to affect his appetite. During the six-hour journey he ate two bananas, although he refused the milk we brought. On arrival at the Limbe Wildlife Centre, Felix Lankester, the manager, and a battery of onlookers met us. Veterinarian Felix believes Nanga to be about 14 months old and hopes to be able to operate to remove the pellets in the near future, once Nanga has settled down and started to play and become more relaxed. Nanga now has a permanent surrogate mother: volunteer Jodie, who is from Colorado. Jodie will look after him 24 hours a day for the next 6 weeks.

There are a few messages to take home from this incident. Although the details are still sketchy, it is clear that a wide range of agencies, from government to wildlife-based organizations, all cooperated to apprehend the trader and bring Nanga to safety. We helped only a little, but we hope that Nanga’s story will illustrate once more the individual trauma that results from the commercial bushmeat trade. It is certain that Nanga was shot while clinging to his mother, and that the same shotgun pellets that killed her entered his body. His mother would have been sold for bushmeat; he would not have fetched a good price due to his size, so would have been sold as a “pet.” One thing is for certain: this little chimpanzee is only a symptom of a more serious malady of society, the commercial trade in buying and selling bushmeat.

Dr. Bethan Morgan is a Conservation Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo.

Read Bethan’s previous blog, Recent Botanical Research in the Ebo Forest

Posted in Apes and Monkeys, Conservation, Default, Field Studies, General | Link to this post

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