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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hubs/greentravel/5388164/Gorilla-warfare-in-the-Congo-jungle.html

Gorilla warfare in the Congo jungle

Some of our closest relatives are facing a battle for survival. Lisa
Grainger meets a team dedicated to securing their future.

By Lisa Grainger
Last Updated: 5:24PM BST 27 May 2009

It’s 33C and I can feel droplets wiggling down my back in the muggy
heat. Mud is squelching through the broken soles of my old trainers.
I’ve just extricated a big green fly that’s flown into my mouth. And
on the table in front of me, at Brazzaville’s main food market, I see
a dead monkey. It is whole: its fluffy fur and long tail still
attached to its tiny body, its ribs cleaned of innards and its face
contorted into a hideous grimace. “Très bon, très delicieuse,” the
woman behind the table says, urging me to taste a sample she’s sliced
from one she’d prepared earlier. “Fume, fume…”

    * Picture gallery: Congo's orphan gorillas

Officially, monkeys, apes and protected species shouldn’t be sold in
the Republic of Congo. Since years of civil war finally ended in 2003,
the government has been trying to work with conservation organisations
and NGOs to try to lure tourists in to their three National Parks and
scattering of reserves, and so has tried to ban the sale of endangered
bush meat.

But it isn’t an easy task. Congo-Brazzaville might be the fourth
biggest producer of oil in Africa, but corruption is endemic, leaving
its population of three million poor and its infrastructure crumbling.
Roads sport potholes the size – and sometimes the depth – of pool
tables. There are few jobs. The west of the country is overrun with
opposition militia called Ninjas, who have almost brought the railway,
and so trade, through the western port of Pointe-Noire, to a halt.
Even electricity is in short supply; when we sit having dinner in
Brazzaville, the lights go out several times – apparently because the
only supply now comes from the country’s even more troubled neighbour,
the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Besides, for centuries the people of Africa have eaten bush meat: the
flesh of wild creatures who have fed on rich natural forests which,
I’m assured, is delicious. To tell Congolese they can’t hunt, or have
to buy (with money many don’t have) thin chickens and tasteless pork
when there are delicious forest creatures to eat is extremely
difficult. Which is why, in the stalls of Brazzaville’s main market,
there are few creatures that I can’t buy.

On a small scrubbed table, a three-foot live crocodile lies miserably,
its legs and long nose tied with raffia to prevent it moving. Turtles
keep trying to flip themselves (to the stallholder’s annoyance) from
their shell onto their feet. Butchers’ blocks are neatly piled with
cubes of smoked eland, wild boar, and whole monkey carcases. And in
the traditional medicine section – hanging with feathers, beads,
leaves, flowers, bundles of bark, the soles of elephants’ feet, jars
of eyes, mammal foetuses, birds' heads and little vials of cobra venom
– I am offered the very thing I hoped not to find: gorilla bones.

Current estimates for gorilla populations make for depressing reading.
Of the most populous species – the western lowland gorilla – there are
thought to be about 125,000 left in the world. But at the current rate
of extermination of about 60 per cent in the past 25 years, according
to Amos Courage of The Aspinall Foundation, which is working with the
Congolese government to protect the species.“We will be lucky if we
have half of that left by 2020. And even fewer mountain gorillas,” he
says.

If anyone knows about gorillas it is Courage. After his natural father
died, his mother married the multi-millionaire eccentric, John
Aspinall, who made his fortune from casinos and who spent much of it
on wild creatures. In his childhood home in Mayfair, there was at one
time a tiger, a capuchin monkey and a gorilla (regularly visited by
the postman and the Mayfair bobbies on their beat). The family,
Courage says, was rarely without a gorilla somewhere. “My mother would
happily take a baby gorilla to Harrods in her bag,” he says. “And I
think I was the only boy at school who had one watching on sports
days!” The expansion of the family menagerie led to the opening of
Howletts (where I met Courage), and then Port Lympe, Wild Animal Parks
in Kent. As more space became available, more gorillas arrived from
Congo-Brazzaville: rescued from the bush meat trade, from private
homes, from crowded zoos, from crates at airports en route to the
Lebanon, where they are favoured as pets, or confiscated at ports and
airports by customs.

When the foundation first started working in Congo-Brazzaville, trying
to halt the trade in the creatures and to keep them in Africa,
gorillas that were confiscated from illegal traders were kept in a
Brazzaville orphanage started by a French woman. “But it was a
hellhole,” Courage says. “In theory, at the back the gorillas had a
small garden to venture into during the day. But in reality it was the
outflow for a latrine from neighbouring government offices. And there
were too many of them – about 70 were housed there in the Eighties and
Nineties – about three-quarters of which were dying from human
diseases: from polio, TB, pneumonia. We quickly realised we had to get
them out.”

In 1992, the Aspinall Foundation negotiated with the government to
give them the use of a national reserve; today they run 44,000
hectares of the Lesio-Louna Gorilla Natural Reserve and 130,000
hectares in the neighbouring Lefini Fauna Reserve (as well as a
similar sized park in neighbouring Gabon). It is here that they run
the only projects of their kind in the world: reintroducing
confiscated baby and adult gorillas into the wild.

The Congo reserves, 87 miles north of Brazzaville off the main N2
highway, are a world away from the mud, shacks, hooting traffic and
disturbing meat markets of the city. From the top of the Batéké
Plateau, steep red cliffs drop into dry yellow grasslands. Rivers
carve their way through valleys, their banks fringed by greenery. And
in the distance loom vast stretches of dark green: the thick tropical
forests in which 25 rescued western lowland gorillas live.

It’s in this jungle that the foundation has created five basic camps,
to house the two Belgian conservationists, seven national soldiers and
23 eco-guards who protect these creatures, and for the few tourists
happy to rough it in order to see the great primates in the wild.

Driving into the forest in a four-wheel drive is like being on a set
of The Jungle Book. Trees soar 230ft into the sky. The shadows of
exotic leaves create pretty patterns on the ground. Lianas drop from
branches like giant monkey swings. And in the undergrowth, giant
lime-green ferns grow amid exotic lilies. There are swampy mosses,
rust-coloured algae floating in pools, and dozens of multicoloured,
flitting butterflies. It’s the tropical forest of fantasies.

The style of the main camp, Iboubikro, is suitably rustic for this
pristine environment. The eight simple guest rooms are clumped in one
big wooden cabin, raised on a platform: each with comfortable beds,
whirring fans and electric lights (when the generator is on for a few
hours at night) and a few shelves. There’s a separate block for
ablutions. And beside the Lefini river is a thatched boma, where meals
are taken and conservation lessons given. For those mad enough to
brave the occasional hippo and crocodile that ventures past, there’s
even a swimming aid: a rope in the river to hold on to and enjoy the
cooling current.

It’s in a small wooden room overlooking this river that the two
conservationists live, and welcome the few dozen guests they get a
year who are prepared to live basically in order to see gorillas up
close. Marielle Puit and Luc Mathot, both environmentalists with
masters degrees in tropical forest management, are only 28, yet are in
charge of half a million hectares, a staff of more than 40 and more
than 25 gorillas. While Luc takes care of the Brazzaville office, the
bureaucracy, transport, building and environmental protection,
Marielle runs the camps, staff and office, as well as overseeing the
gorillas’ health, vaccinating the babies against human diseases, and
taking stool tests when they are ill.

Over dinner on our first night, in an open-sided thatched boma into
which hundreds of insects buzz, Luc tries to explain just a few of the
problems they face. Last year, he says, four gorillas were intercepted
en route from Cameroon to a zoo in Malaysia – which had paid
$1,600,000 (£1million) for the primates. “Of course, the guys who
trapped them only got a tiny proportion,” he says quietly. “It’s the
middle man who makes it. But everyone’s greedy for their bit.” There’s
a problem of corruption in Africa: poachers being let out of jail by
bribing officials – and the NGO Laga (www.laga-enforcement.org) has
been set up to ensure poachers are properly tried and punished.

The jails are short of food, which means prosecutors often have to
provide the food themselves if they want the convicted to remain
inside. The Chinese, in exchange for mining and forestry rights, are
building hydroelectric dams, but without doing environmental impact
research – one of which is upriver from the gorilla sanctuary and will
push surrounding villages into closer proximity to the primates. There
are few environmental organisations working on educating local
populations about the benefits of wildlife, and few other tourism
ventures, so locals can’t see the benefit of conserving gorillas. And
as a result, of course, there is poaching: for bones for traditional
medicine, for meat to eat and for pets for foreigners uneducated and
uncaring enough to believe that an enormous, wild creature –
particularly one so clearly intelligent, and so human-like – can be
kept for his own pleasure.

Just how like humans the world’s largest primates are only dawned on
me when we saw our first gorillas, just after sunrise on our second
day. Every night, the four babies recently rescued by the foundation –
Tanga, 4, Kingoue, 2, and Lokolo and Epena, both 19 months – are
tucked up in a protected shed-like room in the jungle, so that they
feel both cosy and safe. As we crept up to the cage, and looked
through the fine wire mesh window, they were waking up – like
children, disentangling arms from around each other, rubbing their
eyes, yawning and stretching. As one hung from a branch to stretch an
arm, another picked up an old half-lemon, appreciatively closing his
eyes and sniffing it before grating it on the fence to enhance the
smell. They picked their noses, scratched, checked each other’s fur
for insects, and looked at us shyly, and slightly puzzled, as if to
say, “Have we met before?” Then, like all youngsters, when their
nursemaids arrived with food, they perked up: showing off, tripping
each other and rolling about, before settling down in their
nursemaids’ laps for their first bottle of the day.

When the sanctuary was first opened, visitors were allowed to go near
to the babies, and perhaps even hold them. Now, to try to prevent
creatures getting human illnesses, and to keep them in as wild a
manner as possible, only their nursemaids have physical contact,
taking care of them 12 hours a day in the jungle, attempting to teach
them what their natural mothers would have done: to climb, to play and
to forage for food, before putting them to bed at dusk.

As tourists, we had to make do with sitting on a river bank, about
160ft away, and watching them through binoculars for an hour or so, as
they left their cage for their jungle playground. I could have stayed
all day, watching their human-like behaviour. As one lay on his side
on a riverbank, examining his reflection and wafting his hand in the
cool water, another sat cross-legged eating a banana, while the other
two rolled and mock-fought with each other. They climbed trees and ate
fruit. And occasionally each would wander over to the nursemaids, sit
on one of their laps and wrap their arms around them for a hug.

The babies, Luc explained, will spend up to five years with the
nursemaids, sleeping out at night and playing further afield as they
get older. Eventually they will be released as a group – to keep their
social structure – on to a large island, or piece of land with rivers
and swamps as boundaries (to prevent them wandering out beyond the
reserve borders, and being shot by poachers). And one day, hopefully,
they will mate, have babies, and repopulate the area – as, so far,
four re-released females have done.

While on paper the process sounds straightforward, Luc explains, it is
fraught with complications. For one, gorillas are emotionally
sensitive; unlike chimpanzees, which apparently adapt relatively
quickly after relocation, the bigger apes can suffer from stress, then
depression: the most common cause of death. “Over 40 per cent of
babies that arrive die,” he says. “And even the older ones suffer; of
the six adults we first brought here in 1994, only three survived.”

Then there’s the problem of territory. Like many animals, the troops
are dominated by a single male to every three to four females. But
unlike bonobos or chimpanzees, which share their females reasonably
amicably, once gorilla males become sexually mature, at about the age
of 10, they can become aggressive towards other males, and sometimes
kill them.

So far, the foundation has successfully reintroduced two groups back
into the wild, one of which we spot on our second day. Travelling out
along the Louna river, about an hour’s boat ride on a traditional
dug-out pirogue, past thick jungle tangled with lianas and
undergrowth, the driver suddenly points to a bank to our right of
grassland dotted with a few trees. There, on all fours, is an enormous
silverback, his head cocked up, looking straight at us. Then a few
minutes later, a female with a new baby hanging on to her stomach
arrives, followed slowly by 10 other adults and infants – all, having
heard the boat engine, coming to the steep riverbank in the hopes of
getting fruit (which might occasionally be thrown to them, our guide
explains, if they have been relocated to areas without abundant fruit
trees).

This is a relatively rare sighting, Marielle says, as from the river
we watch the great apes walking through the grasslands and, when they
are not given fruit, slowly moving away into trees. It’s also an
extraordinary one: almost a dozen gorillas of all ages, living
together as a group – in spite of the fact that originally many were
ill, disfigured, stressed and thin, and from all parts of the Congo.

Equally exciting is our next sighting: three massive silverbacks,
which live further down the river on an island alone, having been
deliberately separated from the mixed groups to prevent them killing
other males’ babies. Every day, the guide says, they bring these big
males 170lb of fruit, to ensure their diet on a restricted island is
varied and nutritious enough to keep them healthy. The gorillas know
the guides are coming, and on hearing the engines, they come slowly
ambling out of the forest, on to the riverbank, for their food.

It is only when the creatures are about 65ft away from the boat that I
realise just how big they are. Full-grown silverbacks like these weigh
on average about 375lb and, when standing, are about 5ft 6in high,
with thickset necks, strongman shoulders and heavy, square jaws.
Unlike mountain gorillas, whose moderately long coats are black and
tinged at the back with silver, these western lowland gorillas are
natural redheads, their slightly pointed skulls covered with short
orange fur. It’s not difficult to see why – with their bulging
muscles, long pointed canines, finely focused eyes that seem to look
straight through you, and chest-thumping antics – people believed it
was possible for a gorilla to wreck a city, like King Kong did in the
film. These really are creatures you wouldn’t want to venture near
alone. Seeing the primates looking so glossy, so contented, in their
natural habitat was particularly poignant when I heard about some of
the grim places from which they’d been rescued. One gorilla, Lengui,
had been discovered in a field beside the hand of her dead mother,
caught in a trap. Another, Pikounda, had been transported about in a
small bag, malnourished and disfigured from abuse. Tchivou had wounds
around her stomach, having been tethered by a rope. Massabi had been
kept alone in a dark room for eight months. Most, when rescued,
screamed whenever humans came nearby, or cowered in a corner, baring
their teeth. Some have never regained their trust.

The instances of abuse, though, do seem to be decreasing, Luc said
over dinner that night at the boma, with insects whizzing above our
heads and coin-sized raindrops thundering down outside. When the
project first started, about 10 gorillas were rescued a year. Since
the end in 1994 of civil war (during which many foreigners fled), and
since the foundation started to work closely with the government on
enforcing the law, creating a tourist industry, educating the local
population and protecting the reserves with anti-poaching units armed
with Kalashnikovs, the annual number of orphans has dropped to two or
three.

“But, unfortunately, no matter what we do it just doesn’t seem quite
enough,” says Luc, passionately. “We are making an impact, but we know
dozens are still being killed because we hear reports and sometimes
see the meat – often an entire gorilla family will be killed just to
capture the baby. If we had more tourists come here, we could put more
money into local projects and education. Because, when it comes down
to it, conservation is just a question of funding.” The projects to
save the gorillas in central Africa costs $1million (£655,000) a year
to run, according to Amos Courage. Which is why, from this year, the
foundation has upgraded the camp (when he lived there for four years
from 2000 there were neither showers nor lavatories), added a further
two basic camps and trained a cook (who produces delicious, simple
meals). Because more tourists, they believe, will mean they have
funding to save more gorillas.

Having heard disappointed stories from fellow travellers who have had
only 40 minutes on a gorilla safari in Rwanda – and had to hike for
hours to get to the creatures – I hadn’t expected much from my trip to
Congo-Brazzaville. But since I got back, I’ve already visited Howletts
to see a gorilla baby that’s been rejected by its mother and is about
to be relocated to central Africa. Once you’ve been looked in the eye
by a gorilla, it’s hard to forget them – or to ignore their plight.

* The Aspinall Foundation (www.totallywild.net) can arrange for small
groups to visit its gorilla reserve. A seven-day trip, with five
nights in the reserve, visiting the baby orphans and bachelor group,
and one night in the Olympic hotel in Brazzaville, costs from £3,800
per person, including return economy flights, board, lodging, guiding
and transfers, and expeditions to the Blue Lake, visits to local
villages and hikes on the plateau. For more information, email Luc
Mathot at jafcongo AT gmail.com. To buy tickets to the Rainforest Ball to
be held on September 18 2010 in the Aspinall mansion at Port Lympne in
Kent, in aid of the gorilla project, call 01303 264647 or email
Ball AT totallywild.net.