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[Josh Greenman <joshg1973 AT yahoo.com>]

http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news04/070104_news_zoo.shtml
(with photo)

July 1, 2004

Baby gorilla in our midst 

Tulivu, a 2-month-old from the Denver Zoo, moves to Albuquerque

By Frank Zoretich 
Tribune Reporter

One of Albuquerque's newest residents made her brief public debut Wednesday 
in the arms
of Mayor Martin Chavez.

Tulivu, a 59-day-old lowland gorilla who arrived Sunday from the Denver Zoo, 
clung
silently to the mayor's white shirt.

Her name, in Swahili, means "calm" or "quiet," Chavez said. 

"She certainly is calm," he said as as he cradled the big-eyed 8-pound baby. 
"And she's
also very strong," he added, noting her grip on his shirt.

Tulivu was hand-raised by a team of four Denver Zoo employees after her 
mother, Rapunzel,
failed to nurse the infant.

In Albuquerque, Tulivu will be be tended by a team of five zoo employees, 
including Lynn
Tupa, assistant curator. 

Tupa will take Tulivu home every night until Tulivu has been eased into the 
zoo's
resident troop of seven other lowland gorillas.

Beginning on an unspecified day next week, Tulivu will be housed during 
normal zoo hours
in a toy-equipped nursery room of her own adjacent to the Cottonwood Cafe. 
Zoo visitors
will be able to observe her through a glass wall. 

"It will be quite some time before she's displayed outside the glass," Chavez 
said,
because she could catch measles and other viral diseases from humans, 
especially from
children.

Why is it the Rio Grande Zoo that gets to adopt Tulivu? Chavez was ready with 
a quick
answer: "Who wants to live in Denver when you can live in Albuquerque?" 

Then he added she had been relocated to Albuquerque as part of an inter-zoo 
exchange
program meant to help guarantee the long-term survival of lowland gorillas.

"They are critically threatened in the wild," said Tom Silva, assistant 
director of the
Albuquerque Biological Park, which includes the zoo. 

Tulivu's arrival is "the addition of a very valuable female" to the 
Albuquerque gorilla
troop, Silva said. 

"When she's 8 years old, we hope to breed her with our silverback," he said. 
That would
be Marcus, the zoo's 18-year-old lowland gorilla.

There are only about 250 lowland gorillas in North America's zoos, said 
Kirsten
Christensen, supervisor of the zoo's mammal department and a member of 
Tulivu's new
baby-sitting team.

Several thousand lowland gorillas still live in the wild in central Africa, 
but their
territory has been sliced up by farming and other land development.

And they are being killed, Christensen said, by poachers who operate with 
impunity in the
midst of wars and revolutions that spill across the borders of several 
nations.

Lowland gorillas reach an average age of 40 to 45 years in captivity, she 
added.

Fully grown, Tulivu will weigh about 250 pounds. 

"And then I won't be holding her," Chavez said. "She'll be holding me - and 
probably
throwing me around."