Tag archives for Congo
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We can only imagine what these vast tropical forests looked like 300 years ago when wildlife numbers were at the maximum that the ecological balance could support, a lush green paradise filled with the abundance of life… Now we have the “African silence”… The direct result of hundreds of years of exploitation by foreign powers,…
Posted by Panama-based Christian Ziegler specializes in nature photography. His exclusive photos of bonobos appear in the March 2013 issue of National Geographic, illustrating “The Left Bank Ape”, written by David Quammen. In this blog post for News Watch, Ziegler portrays Lola ya Bonobo, a sanctuary for bonobos orphaned by hunters who took their mothers for bushmeat. Here in the grounds of a former country club on the edge of Kinshasa, human “mamas” act as surrogate mothers for baby bonobos, giving them the love and stimulation essential for them to survive.
Botswana and Zambia, two premier wildlife destinations, recently banned all trophy hunting within a few months of each other. This move heralds a major shift in thinking about how Africa’s wildlife resources will be managed in the future. Why did they do this? In short: Corruption fueling unsustainable hunting and poaching that threatens species survival.…
The magnificent Congo Basin is made up of patchwork mosaic of rivers, forests, savannas, swamps and flooded forests. This tropical wonderland is home to forest elephants, lowland and mountain gorillas, bonobos, and buffalo, as well as the enigmatic okapi and a multitude of monkey species. The Congo Basin is an ancient refuge for biodiversity on the…
Birds really do show us that we are ONE PLANET and share everything from ancestry, to space, food, water, weather, oceans and landscapes. We need to stop turning a blind eye to the ongoing wild-caught bird trade around the world and recognize the amazing lives of these masters of the sky and ancestors of the…
Bonobo orphans are pouring into primate sanctuaries across central Africa and thousands of adults are being killed, smoked and bundled with monkeys, pangolins, small antelope and bush pigs for sale in distant bushmeat markets. We are about to reach a tipping point in Africa beyond which it is going to be very hard to save…
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Virus hunters published a paper today in the science journal PLOS Pathogens, describing how a team spanning a number of institutions identified a deadly virus unknown to exist until it killed three people within a few days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They used sophisticated technologies and techniques to detect the new virus, which could cause fatal hemorrhagic fever outbreaks similar to Ebola. Research like this can isolate viruses before they can cause epidemics.
A monkey known as the lesula to local people in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been found to be a species new to science, researchers reported this week in the journal PLOS ONE. The species has been discovered just as it is being threatened with being hunted and eaten into extinction.
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A former child soldier of the Lord’s Resistance Army responds to the clamor over Invisible Children and Kony 2012, the NGO’s campaign against Joseph Kony and the LRA.
Almost exactly a year ago, on the 24th December 2010 at 3pm, the ground staff from 1time Airlines and BidAir Cargo at the King Shaka International Airport (Durban, South Africa) discovered almost 700 dead African grey parrots crammed into 15 crates in the cargo hold of the MD-80 they were offloading. The staff on hand reported…
The Fraser River – The Study of a Watershed
Posted by International League of Conservation Photographers on July 15, 2011 
In the same way a doctor can monitor a patient’s health by analyzing their blood chemistry, scientists can assess the “health” of a river watershed by studying the chemical composition and other properties of the water. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole Research Center, and their international colleagues founded the Global Rivers…
Thousands of visitors trek up Africa’s equatorial volcanoes each year to see the world’s remaining mountain gorillas at close quarters. The thriving gorilla tourist economy has generally been good for the great apes, and may even have secured their survival. But a new study finds that human viruses have infected and killed gorillas. So do tourists also bring their fellow primates the kiss of death?
The only two baby mountain gorillas in the world in captivity, orphaned in 2007 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the slaughter of their mothers in the wild, moved yesterday to a new sanctuary within the country’s Virunga National Park, the Congolese Wildlife Authority said today. Ndeze and Ndakasi, the 2 1/2-year-old female…
More than 125,000 western lowland gorillas discovered last year in a large swamp in the Republic of Congo are becoming increasingly threatened by human activity, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society said today. A study commissioned by WCS recommends protection of the swamp forests adjacent to the southwest border of Lac Télé Community Reserve after…
Khaliah Ali, daughter of legendary boxing icon Muhammad Ali, is honoring the 35th anniversary of the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” bout between Ali and George Foreman by making a humanitarian visit this week to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This marks the first time that an Ali family member has returned to Kinshasa,…
Mountain gorillas survive in two pockets of African rain forest and are shared by three countries that have experienced much turmoil: Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That the gorillas have been able to find relative sanctuary above the fray of the human settlements around them is thanks in no small part to the vision and dedication of several people and…
Chimpanzees in the wild use specialized “tool kits” to forage food, it is known. Scientists reported earlier this year that chimps raiding beehives used several tools in a single tool-using episode and could also use a single tool for many different purposes. Now the same researchers report that not only do chimps use specialized tool…
What’s it like to be a National Geographic explorer/filmmaker/scientist, hip-deep in a swamp in equatorial Africa, edging up to a family of grumpy lowland gorillas? Photo courtesy Mireya Mayor It’s anything but comfortable. Sweat bees get in the eyes, tsetse flies bite, worms can burrow into the skin, and there’s always the prospect of being…
Hundreds of illegal charcoal kilns have been destroyed in dawn raids by armed rangers deep in the forests of Virunga National Park in Eastern Congo in recent days, according to a news statement released by park authorities today. Ranger on guard in front of a charcoal kiln. Copyright Gorilla.cd Virunga is Africa’s oldest national park…
The Congo Gorilla Forest exhibit in New York’s Bronx Zoo is home to 19 of the great apes and an assortment of other animals. It has also raised almost U.S. $11,000,000 for the conservation of Central Africa’s Congo Basin rain forest and wildlife, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo, said today. WCS photos…
Good news about gorillas: The world’s least known gorilla–the eastern lowland gorilla or Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri)–survives in previously unexplored forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced. An eastern lowland gorilla from Kahuzi-Biega National Park, to the north of Itombwe. Wildlife Conservation Society photo…
A baby gorilla was seized from animal traffickers in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Congolese Wildlife Authority following a three-month undercover investigation to bust an international wildlife smuggling ring, Virunga National Park said today. “One suspected trafficker was caught and arrested at Goma International Airport on Sunday while disembarking from a flight…
Wild chimpanzees using tools to raid bee nests have been observed in many parts of Africa. Now observations of chimpanzees in the Congo Basin indicate that they may have developed sophisticated technical solutions to gather honey that differ from those of apes in other regions. The Goualougo Triangle Ape Project research, funded in part by the…
Photo by Michael Nichols/NGS The United Nations and an international coalition of zoos have declared 2009 the Year of the Gorilla. Announced last month, Year of the Gorilla (YoG) aims to unite the needs of both the largest living primate and the people who live in gorilla range states. YoG “aims to boost conservation of…
Photo by Michael Nichols/NGS Endangered forest elephants are avoiding Central Africa’s roadways at all costs, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Save the Elephants. The animals associate roads with poaching, which is rampant in the Congo Basin, say the authors of the study published today in the journal Public…
