FOREWORD

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | PROJECT MANAGER

A Calm time for gorilla physiotherapy

Dear Friends and Supporters,

After several difficult months, or rather a difficult year, it was very satisfying to have two months gone by without any serious problems or hurdles. In fact, the months of June and July were two of ease and serenity, the onlyexception being a branch that fell as a result of a storm and that damaged the drill fence.

Despite this incident, Mbigou, a juvenile male drill rescued in 2020, finally integrated into the large group of 65 individuals. Although the integration of individuals into an already wellestablished group is always tricky, the process went well and smoothly. Our team, including our newly employed Animal Care and Rehabilitation Manager, Marie-Claire Gauthier, will keep monitoring Mbigou’s progress in the group thoroughly. We’ll assess levels of bonding with others for at least two months until we can consider that he is fully part of the group.

Another individual has received special attention of late. As all the groups are stable, we have more time to devote to individuals with special needs. Twiggs is one of these individuals. She arrived in 2003 with an untreated injury of the right arm that left her disabled. Since then, she has not been able to use her arm properly. To increase her mobility and strength, we initiated an innovative physiotherapy

protocol based on positive reinforcement training to encourage and stimulate her to use it slightly more. This uses a similar principle to human rehabilitation. We have been providing her with special enrichment, and a tight programme to which she has been responding very well. On Father’s day, we shared a video of her relationship with our head keeper, Jonathan Kang, to all of our social media platforms. The video reached an unmatched 15.6M people worldwide!

Visibility and communication of our successes and challenges is vital to maintain our resources that are still fragile since the pandemic. Lastly, a short documentary produced by Sky Television for the COP26 in 2021 to emphasized the work done at the LWC to protect wildlife and educate citizens in sustainable practices. Thank you to Children of Conservation for your appreciation.

Despite the constant rainfall for the last two months, our team has maintained our infrastructure consistently. Throughout this period, no less than two guenon enclosures and the duiker enclosure were renovated. We also took the chance to thank and reward the 4 best workers of second trimester of the Centre for their efforts and commitment.

With the rainy season in full swing, we hope that the following months will not be greatly influenced by the very wet weather that is forecasted. We wish for you all to stay healthy, warm and safe.

Thank you all, as ever, for your unfailing support.

Stay safe and healthy!

Peggy Motsch

Project Manager