Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.

dr. cleve hicks

The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili

by

Dr. Cleve Hicks, one of our guest bloggers, was featured last month with a series of posts called “Along the Bushmeat Highway” (Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). The story was from July of last year, and Cleve has given us some more recent follow-up information about the Bili forest area in the DRC. WARNING: some disturbing images included in this entry (the most graphic one is included as a link in its caption).

—

UPDATE – THE FARDC ‘PETTING ZOO’ AT BILI, OCTOBER 2012

The skinny young man dressed in a mix of rags and military gear loomed out of the night like an apparition. He careened across our yard and nearly collapsed on top of Ephrem. Our evening banter was abruptly cut off as we rose from our chairs to confront the lurching, inebriated intruder. He was the youngest member in the squad of six Congolese soldiers stationed in a barracks up the hill from us in Bili. The soldier was so drunk that he could barely sit upright in the seat which we had offered him. At least on this occasion he had left his weapon back at the barracks. ‘I am a member of the Congolese military!’ he proclaimed in a slurred voice. ‘I am Congolese, and this is my pet!’ I looked in his lap and my heart sunk as I made out the dark shape clinging there: a baby chimpanzee, perhaps two years old, her eyes dull and glassy, pink tongue lolling out of her mouth. She periodically nodded off into a dazed slumber, and it looked as if the rumours that the troops were keeping her intoxicated with booze and dope were true.

1 drunk soldier with baby chimp

A drunken young soldier with a baby chimpanzee at our project house. (Photo © Ephrem Mpaka of the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation).

2 cleve with soldier and baby chimp

This was the same orphan that our team had photographed the day before, gazing out from the arms of her owner with a look of befuddled hopelessness. I had sent Ephrem with a pair of Ecoguards over to the barracks of the FARDC (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo) to photograph the ‘petting zoo’ which we had been told the new squad leader was keeping there. In addition to this little female chimpanzee, named Congo, the military and their families were keeping three monkey orphans: a baboon tied to a short leash, an agile mangabey, and a red tailed guenon. The latter two primates scampered around the yard looking for food. After some initial tension between our guards and the military, things calmed down and the soldiers allowed Ephrem to photograph the primates. The soldiers explained that they had acquired the orphan chimpanzee from a shop in the town of Roa about 50 km southwest of Bili, as a ‘mascot’ for the troops. Ephrem explained to the men that it was both dangerous and immoral to keep primates in such a condition, and in the case of the chimpanzee, illegal. Later that evening we considered sending the guards to confiscate Congo, but in the end, decided against it. These military were heavily-armed, often drunk, and had already made threats against our project. Also, we had no place to send the poor orphan.

3 orphan chimp Congo

The orphan chimpanzee Congo kept by a soldier at the military barracks in Bili.

We were unsure why this young soldier had come to our house with the baby chimpanzee. Did he want to sell her to us? Intimidate us? Or was he just out-of-his-mind drunk? Maybe all three at once. After failing completely to penetrate his whiskey-soaked stupor with reason, we sent him stumbling on his way back to the barracks.

Two of the three chimpanzee orphans we had encountered on this trip, one in Bili and the other two en route, had been held by FARDC soldiers and officers (the third was held by a traditional chief at Lisala). The one we saw in the regional capital of Buta had been kept by the highest military authority in that town. Although the people of Bili certainly consumed monkeys and other wildlife, we had never seen any chimpanzee meat or orphans in the hands of the locals. The indigenous Azande still seemed to hunt only for local trade and consumption, but it was clearly in the vested interested of a number of outsiders to link up Bili to the huge and rapidly expanding commercial bushmeat network a hundred miles to the south. This was particularly the case for ivory. What a terrible example these military men and federal officials were setting – and not only in regards to conservation.

Later in the month these military men, in cahoots with the corrupt territorial administrator, began to shake down local merchants for money and merchandise, citing a law forbidding non-soldiers from wearing military-style clothing and mercilessly harassing anyone who happened to be wearing khaki shorts or cargo pants. They would then use this money to buy copious amounts of alcohol, which they would drink in public – fuelling more roadside shakedowns. They even did this to one of our motorbike drivers at our project base, forcing me to record the incident on film and threaten to report the culprits to the authorities. Only the threat of exposure caused them to back down. It was and is my hope that the local people, frequently victims of such aggression and thievery from the soldiers and administrators, would realize that we could serve as an ally against such forces of anarchy – and there were indications that this was happening.

In addition, we found evidence that powerful outsiders were ignoring the closed hunting season, a period of several months in which it is forbidden by national law to hunt. The purpose of this closed season is to allow key prey species to recover. On the road between our forest camp and Bili, in the middle of this closed season, our guards came upon a man shooting a red tailed guenon out of a tree. They confiscated his gun and the monkey carcass and brought them to us. It turned out the gun belonged to a highly-placed government official in Bili. That man paid us a visit on the same night demanding that we return his gun. We refused to comply. Later, in a public hearing, he tried to explain to us why it should be permissible for powerful men like him to hunt any time they wanted to. We encountered similar incomprehension of or disrespect for basic Congolese law from a number of regional officials throughout the course of our stay in Bili.

4 confiscated monkey & shotgun

Our Ecoguards, Feruzi OPJ and Feruzi Yenga, confiscated this monkey and shotgun during the closed hunting season. The owner was a powerful governmental official.

In late October, on our way out of Bili to Buta, we drove past a herd of 45 Mbororo cattle being imported into the lushly forested region. We had seen only a few very skinny cattle at Bili, but here, further south in the heart of the forest, domesticated animals were arriving in increasing numbers – out with the local fauna, in with the cattle, pigs, goats, and chickens. Arriving at Buta, we stopped at the headquarters of the highest-ranking regional military official, a man whom our team had confirmed owned a baby chimpanzee. Despite this, he was widely known to be professional and respectful in his dealings with civilians. He listened courteously to our complaints about his troops in Bili and said he would work to get them transferred, and that he would also send out a message to his soldiers not to buy baby chimpanzees. At least he listened to us and appeared to take our complaints seriously. I am under no illusions that this will change anything much, for the orphan Congo or the people of Bili, but I am convinced from what we have seen that the Congolese military are a crucial link in the illicit trade of protected wildlife species, from chimpanzees to elephants. The commander told us that he and his team had been recently trained at their base by military advisors from the United States, and he proudly showed us a certificate on the wall to prove it. Might this arrangement between foreign governments and the FARDC present us with an opportunity to spread to the Congolese troops the urgent message that they should be protecting, not cruelly exploiting, DR Congo’s priceless and world-famous endangered species?

5 bili cattle

Domesticated livestock are rapidly replacing the local fauna (above, Bili, below, Road to Buta)
6 cattle road to buta

7 male chimp gangu forest

A majestic adult male chimpanzee in the Gangu Forest (photo © Ephrem Mpaka of Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation). How can we keep him and his kind from ending up in the bushmeat markets? It may soon be too late for Gangu’s elephants (adult and juvenile mandibles found at a hunting camp).

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 1
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 2
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 3

This mission was made possible by the generous support of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, The Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, The US Fish and Wildlife Service, l’ Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, The Lucie Burgers Foundation, and The African Wildife Foundation.

 

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 3

by

This is the third installment of a series of posts from Dr. Cleve Hicks. Cleve did his PhD research in the DRC studying chimps in the Bili Forest. Read Part 1 of this story and Part 2 first! (To add some context to the story, look at the map of the “Bushmeat Highway” here).

—

Our stay in Titule was prolonged an extra day due to an illness suffered by one of our Ecoguards. Fortunately we were able to sleep at the house of my old friend Chief Mangay of Lebo. Upon departing from Titule, we veered north towards Bili, crossing the mighty Uele River on pirogues. Villagers on the south bank of the Uele proudly showed us a large eagle they had captured from its nest. On the north bank of the river, we left behind the continuous cover of forest to the south and entered into savannah / forest mosaic territory. This road was, as it had been in 2006, much less heavily trafficked than the roads to the south of the Uele. Not only did we see no monkey or duiker carcasses or monkey orphans, but just to the north of the Uele we got of first glimpse of free-living monkeys in the trees above the road: a black and white colobus and a bit further along a tree-full of chittering red-tailed guenons. Lukuru researchers Ephrem Mpaka and Gilbert Paluku had noticed the same pattern (no monkey or duiker meat) on their trip from Buta to Bili two days earlier. This was encouraging, but there were also signs that times and circumstances were changing. In the north bank riverside town of Lisala, as we stopped to snack on binyes (simple concoctions of flour, sugar, and palm oil), we were confronted with a bustling herd of long-horned cattle, about 15 in number, munching on bamboo and riverside herbs. They were being herded by local Congolese, whom we were told had recently bought them from Mbororo herders to the north. We watched the bovines munch their way through the roadside forest and the lush vegetation lining the Uele River. Are these cattle destined to replace the abundant hippopotamuses that forage under the cover of night along the river’s edge?

MbororCattleUele

A large herd of cattle purchased by local Congolese from Mbororo herders, on the north bank of the Uele River, Lisala.

CattleEatBambo

Cattle feasting on bamboo at the forest edge.

Further to the north, in the shadow of a collapsed bridge across the Api River, we were told by a local man that Mbororo herders were massed just 30 km away from us, with tens of thousands of cattle ready to sweep across the savannahs. In their wake, he claimed, sometimes travelled child soldiers of the dreaded Lord’s Resistance Army (although according to him, the two groups were not friends). Later, as we travelled north, we would hear from a number of Azande that the Mbororo would frequently raid their fields for crops, leading to pitched battles. Such observations reinforced my impression of an inherent contradiction in the policy of the authorities of Northern DRC. Government officials were both sending military to confront Mbororo herders but at the same time buying cattle from them. Where this will lead is impossible to say.

Sadly, although commerce in monkeys and duikers seemed to be much less common in this region, as was the case at Bili 5 years ago, we did hear the distressing news that the traditional chief of Lisala was keeping an orphan chimpanzee at his house about 1 km north of the Uele River. In the past, we had received a number of reports of orphan chimpanzees having been captured from this narrow belt along the north bank of the Uele River. Henri and I paid the chief a visit. Henri carefully explained the ICCN mission and asked the chief if we could see the orphan. He sent someone up to his house, and in a few minutes we heard a shrill, near-human scream. Shortly after, we watched as a tiny infant chimpanzee was dragged down to the paillote on a leash. I readied my camera and began taking photos as the orphan was placed onto a bamboo pole beneath the chief’s paillote.

On my previous mission south of the Uele River I had looked into the desperate eyes of over 35 orphan chimpanzees, but one never really gets used to the shock of it—the unimaginable sense of loss and helplessness registered in those haunted, searching brown eyes. Although in the past we had been able to save a number of the orphans we had encountered on our travels, today there was nothing I could do for Lisala, only photograph him as he raised his eyes skyward and emitted a plaintive pant-hoot to which he will never hear a response.

Henri got the story of Lisala’s capture from the chief: about two months ago, in the forest about a two hours’ walk east from the town, a group of local bow-hunters came across a party of chimpanzees. According to the chief, the apes fled in terror, abandoning the baby for the hunters to capture. This is often the story given, but I find it extremely unlikely that a mother chimpanzee would desert her baby. Far more likely, she was shot for bushmeat, which the chief would not want to admit to the ICCN. Indeed, Lisala had a vivid red bruise on his right brow ridge, possibly acquired when he tumbled out of the trees clutching onto his dying mother.

LisalaOrphan1

LisalaOrphan2

LisalaOrphan3

Lisala the orphan chimpanzee, kept by a traditional chief just north of the Uele River.

The hunters presented the baby as a gift to the chief. Now the chief wanted cigarettes and / or money from us for the privilege of seeing his baby chimpanzee. We politely deferred, of course, and went into our standard speech about the danger of keeping chimpanzees as a pets, and the damage that such a practice inflicts on populations of free-living apes. As we left his parcel, the chief called out after us in Lingala as a parting shot: ‘Ezali mabe te – ey ko batela mboka ya mokondji!’ (It isn’t a bad thing – he will guard the chief’s village!’).

As we sped northwards on our motorbikes, I was left with a heavy heart. There are only a limited number of times that this tragic situation can repeat itself before the African forests will be emptied of our closest evolutionary cousins. We have little time left to come up with a solution.

LisalaOrphan4

What can we do to keep this tragedy from repeating itself over and over again?

A few hours and a couple of motorbike breakdowns later, near sunset, we crossed into the hinterlands of Bili, 12 km south of the town center. We stopped to stretch our sore backs and munch on some soft pink peanuts offered us by a friendly villager. A tiny and rather brazen kitten approached us and made fast friends with Karsten. We wondered what awaited us in the frontier town just over the horizon. The last time I set foot in Bili was over five years ago. Although at that time bushmeat was certainly consumed locally, there was little evidence that, with the exception of ivory, it had become linked to the commercial trade networks proliferating rapidly to the south. But will the situation remain the same in 2012? We shall see…

BiliWoman

The outskirts of Bili at sunset.

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 1
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 2

Also by Dr. Cleve Hicks, The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili

This mission was made possible by the generous support of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, The Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, The US Fish and Wildlife Service, l’ Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, The Lucie Burgers Foundation, and The African Wildife Foundation.

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 2

by

This is the second installment of a series of posts from Dr. Cleve Hicks. Cleve did his PhD research in the DRC studying chimps in the Bili Forest. Read Part 1 of this story about some of his experiences here. WARNING: some disturbing images are included in this entry.

—

I was encouraged to see that a strong ICCN contingent of 20 Ecoguards was now installed inside Rubi-Tele, actively arresting poachers and confiscating bushmeat. Another twenty guards were scheduled to join them soon. This team patrols the forests of the reserve during the first three weeks of every month, and then on the last week they pass through the roadside villages down the highway bisecting the game reserve. Together with the road block erected at Sukisa, we can hope that these patrols will make a difference for the embattled wildlife of these forests. On this trip I counted the carcasses of 15 monkeys on the road between Kisangani and the southern border of Rubi-Tele. Of the four un-smoked carcasses we could identify to species, three were red tailed guenons and one was a red colobus; we also saw two hornbills, an African civet, a turacao, and a duiker for sale. Encouragingly, inside the Rubi-Tele reserve, we saw no primate carcasses, save for one cast-aside monkey tooth next to a village hearth 12 km south of Buta Town. We also saw the fresh carcass of a duiker pass us on a bike.

If enough chimpanzees in the far corners of the reserve have managed to survive the poaching onslaught of the last decade, Rubi-Tele might provide us with a convenient research base, being close to village markets and protected by guards. I also hope that it might serve as an ICCN spearhead into the more remote reaches of northern DRC, in particular, into the much larger and less-disturbed Bili-Uéré Domaine de Chasse. Our team of six guards, I hope, will be the vanguard of that movement.

The next day, our goal was to reach Buta Town by nightfall. From our caravan of motorbikes, we held our breath as we watched the Nissan catapult across the 35 km warren of mud pits separating Sukisa from Buta. It seemed a miracle that Karsten’s delicate camera traps survived the truck’s repeated lurching out of one rut and down into the next.

Our entry into Buta Town was heralded by a conflict between our ICCN guards and the local military police, who were stationed at the Rubi River Bridge. In order to avoid confusion, Henri had planned that our phalanx of vehicles would cross the city bridge together, but as the Nissan forged ahead onto the bridge, at the last minute one of our of motorbikes stalled. Pichou the wily mechanic leaped off our bike and in a flash fixed the problem. The motorbike’s engine revved, and we sped across the bridge in the wake of the truck, but it was too late. The military police (MPs), confronted with a truck-full of armed Ecoguards, were irate that they had not been informed of our mission by a ‘responsable’. As usual, it didn’t matter at all that we had sent an advance message to the Buta authorities. We pulled up to the check-point, into what was rapidly developing into a tense stand-off. Our hired driver was yelling at the MPs, and the MPs and the Ecoguards were shouting and posturing angrily at each one another. Henri ably stepped to the side of the road with the head of the border police and explained the purpose of our mission and the reason we had not all arrived all at one time, while I hung back to diffuse a heated argument between an Ecoguard and an MP. Thanks to Henri’s diplomatic skills, we made it through the checkpoint with little more than a case of frayed nerves.

The rest of our stay in Buta went pretty smoothly, all things considered. The next day, Karsten, Henri, Ephrem, and I made the rounds to visit the important regional authorities: CDD, DGM, ATAR, and ANR. The reception we received was remarkably warm and polite compared to my visit in 2008, a testimony to the professionalism of the TL2 Lukuru Team and the respect with which the ICCN is accorded within the Congo. One thing that struck me as ominous, however, was the large herd of long-horned cattle and asses grazing the lawns of the governmental center; this livestock had undoubtedly been purchased from Mbororo traders. The nomadic Mbororo herders, originally from Mali, are currently migrating in a north-south wave across Northern DRC, with devastating effects on the local fauna. Native ungulates are replaced by cattle, savannahs are burned at the wrong time of year, and lions and other big cats are poisoned to keep them from preying on the domesticated herds. The Mbororo also frequently enter into aggressive conflicts with the local Congolese they meet. Clearly though, by selling cattle to Congolese merchants and authorities they are also now financially entrenched into the economy of Northern DRC.

The following day, Henri accompanied our ICCN guards to meet with the head of the Buta police as well as the regional commandant of the FARDC, the Congolese military, to arrange for our guards’ permission to work at Bili. This also went quite well… but as a reminder of how far we have to go in spreading our conservation ideals into this area, the commandant proudly introduced Henri and Ephrem to his pet orphan chimpanzee ‘Jaques de Bondo’, which he had acquired from the Bondo region to the north of the Uele River. Ephrem snapped the following photograph of the pitiable orphan:

OprhanJaques De Bondo

Jaques de Bondo, a chimpanzee orphan kept by a high-ranking military official in Buta. Photo © Ephrem Mpaka.

(Recall from Hicks et al. 2010 that 25% of the chimpanzee orphans in this region belonged to military, police, or government officials / traditional authorities).

During our five days at Buta we saw a captive baboon, a patas monkey (from the Ango savannas to the northeast), and a guereza colobus monkey, as well as a key chain made from a forest buffalo tail. Little had changed in the four years since I was last here.

The next leg of our voyage, between Buta and the bucolic old colonial town of Titule, was impassable by truck; we returned our rented Nissan to Kisangani and loaded all of our supplies onto bicycles and motorbikes. Along the 130 kilometers of untamed boggy road between Buta and Titule, I counted the carcasses of 12 red-tailed guenons and one Dent’s monkey passing us on bicycles or offered for sale by the roadside, along with one duiker. In one tiny village we spotted two forlorn primate orphans which had been captured from the surrounding forests, an agile mangabey and a baboon. The baboon darted around nervously as we arrived to investigate, and was sniffed at and nuzzled by a number of village dogs. We struggled to communicate to the village patriarch why it was dangerous, unethical, and even foolhardy to keep primates as pets. This section of road remained a veritable bushmeat highway.

BaboonOrphan

MonkeysBike

Primate orphan and bushmeat encountered along the Buta-Titule Road.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 1
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 3

Also by Dr. Cleve Hicks, The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili

This mission was made possible by the generous support of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, The Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, The US Fish and Wildlife Service, l’ Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, The Lucie Burgers Foundation, and The African Wildife Foundation.

Works cited:

Hicks TC, Darby L, Hart J, Swinkels J, January N, Menken SBJ. 2010. Trade in orphans and bushmeat threatens one of The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s most important populations of Eastern Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). African Primates 7 (1): 1-18.

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 1

by

Dr. Cleve Hicks has written a very moving story about his encounters with the bushmeat trade and bushmeat orphans in central Africa as part of our guest blogging project. Dr. Hicks earned his master’s degree working with the chimps just down the road from us at the Chimpanzee & Human Communication Institute, and continues to study chimps in free-living Africa. He has worked for several years in the northern DRC studying chimps in the Bili Forest. This story is going to be split into three segments, so check back over the next few days for the continued pieces. WARNING: some disturbing images included in this entry (the most graphic ones are included as links in their caption).

—

LUKURU MISSION TO BILI, JULY 2012

As our caravan rumbled along the recently-repaired dirt road leading from Kisangani to Buta, I felt a sense of relief. We had temporarily left behind us the flurry of stamps, signatures, and copies in triplicate necessary to get us back to the forest of Bili, and I felt the same sense of expectation I had when I first arrived in DR Congo back in 2004. Every kilometer we put behind us was getting us closer to the chimpanzees of Gangu Forest. Our caravan consisted of four motorbikes and a Nissan rented from the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), which was brimming over with bicycles, trunks, researchers, and Ecoguards.

TeamBili2July2012

Team Bili, 2 July 2012, preparing for our departure from Kisangani (together with TL2 researcher Dino Schwa; photo by team member Gilbert Paluku).

Our truck had briefly broken down back in Banalia, putting us several hours behind schedule, and it was now clear that we would not reach our destination, the frontier town of Buta, by nightfall. Project Pro-Routes had done an excellent job repairing the road since I last suffered to travel over it back in 2008, but we had been told that the final 35 km before Buta remained a morass of muddy pits, lurching divets, and lop-sided gulleys, which we could not risk getting stuck in at night. Fortunately at around sundown we found ourselves pulling up at the road block set up by ICCN guards at Sukisa, the guard station established to check vehicles for bushmeat as they passed through the Rubi-Tele game reserve. As Lukuru team leader Henri Silegowa and I watched our six ICCN guards greet their Rubi-Tele compadres, Henri said, “Nous sommes chez nous.” (“We are at our house.”) The Rubi-Tele guards were sharply outfitted in new uniforms, carried arms, and projected a highly motivated and professional demeanor. The station had come a long way since Terese Hart visited it in 2007 on her faunal survey of the forest (Hart 2007). After having spent so many years working to raise awareness about the neglected wildlife of northern DRC, it was exciting to see that the region was no longer being ignored.

Caravan

We stretched our cramped limbs, wiped the red road mud off our faces, and happily accepted the chairs offered us by Monsieur Jean Robert Lobela, the station’s Chef des Gardes. He apologized that the chief conservateur was away in Kisangani, but then enthusiastically asked us if we would like to see some of the items they had confiscated here recently. He led us across the road to a mud building, from out of which his men pulled two tattered but still gorgeously-striped okapi skins confiscated within the last year from poachers’ camps inside the game reserve.  We could see from the tag attached the ear of the first horned skin, which belonged to a male, that it was taken in 2011. The female skin beside it was only three months old. With the distressing news from the previous week of the slaughter of park guards and okapis at Epulu still fresh in our minds, it was disturbing to see the killing taking place here as well, but at the same time heartening to see that someone was taking the problem seriously.

Next, Monsieur Lobela brought us two scarred, blackened skulls of chimpanzees, each tagged and inscribed with the date and location of confiscation. One, tagged from 2012, had belonged to a small male with large pointy canines, and came from a poachers’ camp about a day’s walk to the north. I then inspected the tag on the larger skull, that of an adult female. Her incisors had been charred black from being slowly smoked over a campfire, and a dingy ring of soot circled her mouth.

ChimpSkullsSukisa

Chimpanzee skulls recently confiscated from hunting camps within Rubi-Tele.

I was startled to see a familiar name on her tag: Ephrem Mpaka, 4 September 2011. Our very own Ephrem, TL2 researcher and now part of our Bili team, who was part of the group gathered around this macabre collection of carcasses. Later, in his typical animated style, Ephrem recounted the story to us:

In September 2011, Ephrem was on a mission for Lukuru Foundation to collect okapi dung samples inside Rubi-Tele, but he was also interested in other protected species. One evening he was on a patrol with ICCN guards about seven km west into the forest. They had already spotted a number of fresh chimpanzee nests in this region, and heard their pant hoots and drums. As he and the guards walked down a hunters’ trail, they heard resonating through the still forest the whacks of a machete against a tree. Someone was gathering firewood. Following the trail to the sounds, they arrived at a small hunting camp, for the moment occupied by only one woman. Spread across a smokestack above a smoldering fire was the blackened carcass of a female chimpanzee along with two monkeys. Acting quickly before the woodchoppers returned, the guards grabbed the 12-gauge shotgun they found by the hunting shack, apprehended the woman, and then fanned out into the forest to arrest the two male residents of the camp. The poachers, Basoko people from a village located within the reserve, offered no resistance. When asked why they had decided to hunt inside the reserve, they explained that there was a mourning ceremony taking place at their village, and they had been sent out into the forest to bring back meat. Ephrem documented the scene with the following disturbing photographs which he kindly shared with me. He later returned with the chimpanzee skull to Sukisa base and tagged it.

In September 2011, Ephrem Mpaka of Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation took this photograph of the confiscation by ICCN guards of a smoked chimpanzee (along with an Angolan colobus and a red tailed guenon) at a poachers’ camp inside Rubi-Tele DC. In addition, during the month he was there, Ephrem documented 11 okapi skins that had been taken from the reserve in addition to the ones we had just been shown.

OkapiChurchDrum

Is this the best use we can think of for the beautiful okapi? An okapi skin church drum in the Rubi-Tele region in 2011.  Perhaps religious leaders could be convinced to speak out against this custom. Photo © Ephrem Mpaka.

It was clear that the large-scale killing of chimpanzees and other primates which I had documented in the area between 2007 and 2008 (Hicks et al. 2010) had continued unabated in the intervening years. But one question remained unanswered: had it spread to the forests of Bili in the north?

TO BE CONTINUED…

Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 2
Along the Bushmeat Highway: Part 3

Also by Dr. Cleve Hicks, The FARDC ‘Petting Zoo’ at Bili

This mission was made possible by the generous support of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, The Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, The US Fish and Wildlife Service, l’ Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, The Lucie Burgers Foundation, and The African Wildife Foundation.

Works cited:

Hart T. 2007. Evaluation de l’Etat de Conservation Domaine de Chasse de Rubi-Télé : Inventaires fauniques, contexte historique et recommandations pour assurer la conservation du site en rapport avec la réhabilitation de la Route National 4. Un rapport soumis à l’ AGRECO dans le cadre de la mise en oeuvre de l’Etude d’Impact Environnemental et Social dans la Zone du Projet PROROUTES.

Hicks TC, Darby L, Hart J, Swinkels J, January N, Menken SBJ. 2010. Trade in orphans and bushmeat threatens one of The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s most important populations of Eastern Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). African Primates 7 (1): 1-18.