Foreword

Quarterly Report

Dear friends and supporters,

After the dusty heat of the dry season, the arrival of the 2nd quarter saw rain return to Limbe, freshening and renewing the atmosphere, and all of us.

At the LWC, April started with a major event - the arrival of our first infant chimpanzee for over 5 years. Little Bakossi was seized by MINFOF authorities in Bakossi National Park and arrived on the 3rd of April. This was both a memorable and challenging event for us all – poor Bakossi was exhausted and likely traumatised by the journey and probable murder of her mother and family group prior to her rescue. For LWC, it required a rapid reaction to ensure her immediate needs were catered for, crucially attentive care and reassurance, milk, and rest. The weeks which followed saw our dedicated quarantine and vet teams working flat out, and she rapidly improved both physically and psychologically, and started to climb around in her new surroundings. She has become a happy, healthy, and energetic young chimp, particularly attached to our incredible Head of Quarantine, Killi, who has ensured her every need was met. She is developing a very distinctive and charming personality and loves nothing better than being tickled repeatedly!

In June, with the wet season approaching, and having completed her necessary health checks, Bakossi was placed in a specially designed nursery and play area, with climbing frames both outside and inside (for those rainy-season storms). After taking some time to explore and become familiar with her new surroundings, she now seems delighted and content, learning and developing as naturally as possible.

Rescued orphans such as Bakossi are always a bittersweet story. Her background is a tragedy, her family probably illegally hunted and sold as bushmeat. But, at least, in LWC she will get a second chance at life, to be introduced in due course, when she is big enough, to a chimpanzee surrogate mother and then a group of her own. Hopefully, in years to come, she will get the chance to be released into a large semi-wild enclosure, or even eventually into the wild, within a protected area in the region, with less illegal and destructive activity.

In the meantime, she brings all of us daily joy and provides a powerful symbol of awareness, education, and hope, that this devastating destruction of the forests and their wildlife can be stopped, if only enough human beings decide they care enough to make it happen.

Other exciting news came from our friends at Ebo Forest Research Project. They generously decided to donate 2 of their vehicles to us – for this we are incredibly grateful! We shall now be able to use our own vehicles for browse collections on our Green Project (rather than renting one) and much else besides. Our hard put-upon construction team are particularly happy!

The water supply at LWC has been deteriorating for some time. As 2022 has progressed the situation has become

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Quarterly Report

unsustainable. The municipal mains supplied water is almost never available, and so we have been forced to send a pick-up around town with barrels on the back, collecting water from whatever municipal taps they can find flowing, and bring it back. This makes providing enough clean drinking water for the 250+ animals a daily and uncertain challenge, and the tough work of cleaning the enclosures is that much harder for staff.

The generosity of our supporters, particularly the kind people at PASA, means that we can now drill a borehole, to supply our own water independently. The first survey has been done and we wait in anticipation, and with fingers crossed, for the drilling to start and fervently hope for a good result!

May saw our annual graduation event for the school children who took part in our conservation education outreach programme. This was the first one for a few years without most of the COVID restrictions and we were unsure how many kids would turn up. In the end, more than 2,000 filled the ‘Jungle Village’ amphitheatre in the Limbe Botanical Gardens to bursting point – and created a raucous and deafening celebration of the hard work they put in during the school year. Thanks must go to the Conservator of the Limbe Botanical Gardens for hosting and especially Ateh Wilson (our long-serving Head of Education), and his team for making such a success of both the outreach programme (especially given the extra complexities due to COVID) and the graduation event. It was truly a glorious celebration of Conservation Education!

One of our senior vets, Mr Akih Emmanuelle, left us for 6 months to

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attend expert primate veterinary training in The Democratic Republic of Congo with Dr Luis Flowers – we shall miss him here but wish him well and that he comes back full of knowledge. He also attended the annual PASA Vet Conference in Kenya on our behalf, which he reports was incredibly useful, both in learning more about infectious diseases and in the contact with other vets with similar challenges at other sanctuaries. Akih is an ambassador for LWC while he is away, and I know he will make us proud. He is also an example to our staff here that we highly value their knowledge and will always look for opportunities for their development and training.

The construction team has, as always, been extremely busy. This quarter saw them addressing much needed maintenance and the addition of extra climbing structures and shade provision in the tantalus and patas monkey enclosure. This involved the sourcing of more palm fronds – again we thank Limbe Botanical Gardens for allowing us to harvest from there – and bamboo. Following this, they addressed the drill enclosure. Our incredible drills are also incredibly destructive! They like nothing more than the challenge of destroying climbing structures, and much maintenance work has been carried out there. Our plan is to source far stronger solid wood poles, not easy to come by, and build a far denser, extensive, and structurally robust climbing frame (modelled on our sister project in Calabar, Nigeria).

One of our main collaborators in Cameroon is AMMCO, the African Marine Mammal Conservation Organisation, and June saw their annual ‘Street Whale’ festival and symposium

Quarterly Report

being held in Kribi. LWC attended, well represented from our education and management groups. The event draws people and organisations from all over Cameroon and was an inspiring and highly educational experience, not just regarding marine issues but the environment and wildlife protection in general.

A touching moment for all of us involved in their rehabilitation, came when our lovely and lively baby mandrill and drill pair had to be separated. Ekema (mandril) and Malika (drill) came to the LWC a month apart in Q4 2021 and have since formed a strong bond as playmates as they have grown up here. But they are of course different species, and it was time they started the process of integration into groups. It was decided the best option for Ekema would be for him to go to Ape Action Africa, to be introduced into a group of their mandrill in large, forested enclosures in Mefou National Park, near Yaoundé, and within the natural mandrill range. This provided the opportunity for Arend van Blerk, the new deputy director at AAA, to come to Limbe and meet us all, which was a great pleasure and I’m sure the start of many successful collaborations with him and AAA. He took little Ekema back with him and through regular updates we understand he is doing well and starting to integrate into one of their groups.

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For Malika, the female drill, it was time to start introducing her to surrogate ‘mothers’, protective drills she can bond with in the calm of our special animal care unit, and who will look after her once she is introduced into the main drill group. On June 2nd , two female drills were moved to be with Malika to start this process – Malika, being ever the selfconfident and energetic character, has so far taken all this in her stride and we will continue to monitor carefully as the introduction progresses.

Life seems to proceed in ‘fast forwards’ here in Limbe, with a constant programme of activity and unexpected events! But that is the beauty of the challenge at LWC, and we will all continue to meet it energetically.

I will report back to you soon on how the wet season treated LWC, and all our infrastructure and animals. In the meantime, please stay well and healthy.

Thank you all for your wonderful and dedicated support, which is so crucial to our efforts - we really could not do it without you!

All the very best,

Jerry Aylmer

Project Manager