Beyond the reach of bloody conflicts in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), rescued apes swing from one branch to another under the leafy canopy at a wildlife sanctuary.
On the edge of a national park that is home to endangered gorillas, the Lwiro Ape Rehabilitation Center (CRPL) has for two decades nursed wounded and traumatized animals to recovery, and taken in orphans.
The center houses scores of chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos among its wards, often saved from poachers in a region where illegal activities go largely unchallenged in the insecurity caused by many armed groups.
Photo: AFP
During a recent visit, half a dozen apes gathered behind a fence to choose the best banana to peel and eat after a fresh food delivery.
Female chimpanzees walked around, carrying their babies on their backs.
Each of the 110 chimpanzees at the sanctuary in South Kivu province eats 6kg of fruit, cereals and vegetables a day, the staff said, adding that the infants are bottle-fed.
Photo: AFP
“These orphaned baby chimps are coming to us because of insecurity and war,” center manager Sylvestre Libaku said, urging the government to secure the region to “let the animals live peacefully in their natural habitat.”
Weeks or even months of effort are needed to stabilize an animal in its new home. Tarzan, a chimpanzee collected in June last year from Bunia in the troubled Ituri province to the north, still lives in quarantine.
The ape has unhealed wounds on his skull, but “is doing better. The hair is starting to grow, but he is still kept in his cage, as we wait for him to be able to mix with the others,” Libaku said.
However, Byaombe, another injured chimpanzee picked up more than a year ago, is a source of worry. The animal receives care every day, but “without success — its future is not reassuring,” he said.
In his laboratory, Damien Muhugura handles samples taken from sick animals.
“We do parasitological analyses to search for intestinal worms,” among other bacteriological and biochemical risks, Muhugura said.
The facility extends over 4 hectares inside the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, named after two extinct volcanoes and listed as a UN World Heritage Site.
Animals brought in from large forests, where they roamed freely, “feel trapped” on the small terrain, veterinarian Assumani Martin said.
Thirty-nine grey parrots were in November 2020 released into the Kahuzi-Biega forest, after a stay for adaptation at the center, founded in 2002 by the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature and the Center for Research in Natural Sciences.
Since then, no animals have been introduced to the reserve because of the insecurity in and around the protected domain, Libaku said.
Covering 600,000 hectares, the national park lies between the extinct Kahuzi and Biega volcanoes, and provides a sanctuary to a remarkable diversity of wildlife, including about 250 eastern lowland gorillas, the last of their kind.
UNESCO describes the park as “one of the ecologically richest regions of Africa and worldwide,” but it is also one of 52 sites on the World Heritage endangered list for the planet.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to