I saw Nanga just after his operation, when he was still a bit drowsy. Jody Ubert, a volunteer with LWC, has been looking after Nanga 24 hours a day since he arrived. Jody is a special-needs teacher from Colorado and has spent the past year volunteering at three different primate sanctuaries in Africa.

The day-to-day work at LWC is overseen by a team of dedicated keepers and support staff, many of whom have worked with the LWC for many years. For example, Matute Johnson (photographed) has been working there for nine years and is currently working with the chimpanzees. There are three groups of chimpanzees at LWC: a boisterous adult group, a slightly demented juvenile group, and the infant group, to which Nanga will be introduced once he is a bit more confident.

The contents of a shotgun cartridge.

These groups are not what you might hope to see at a normal zoo. Because LWC is a sanctuary for victims of the commercial bushmeat trade, all animals are rescued and normally arrive at the Centre when they are young and often recently traumatized. The youngsters will grow up together, and the lack of a hierarchical age structure is confusing to them and often causes headaches for LWC. Other animals are rescued after years of being tied up, often alone, and sometimes abused and mental trauma is evident in many of the animals. Introducing new animals into a group is a difficult but necessary task, given the lack of space at LWC and other sanctuaries in Cameroon. LWC is just finishing their latest addition, a specially constructed chimpanzee enclosure that will greatly increase capacity and allow some of the juvenile chimpanzees to enter the adult group, hopefully with minimal disruption to harmony.

Every day Nanga is improving a little. At first he was quiet, shy, and slow to respond to stimuli, but he is gradually starting to relax and play a little. Johnson and other keepers at LWC are spending a few hours every day playing with Nanga and will take over duties when Jodie leaves Cameroon.

Nanga’s story is all too common. He has been lucky: he hasn’t ended up as a pet or on someone’s table like his mother. Just like Soso, the little drill that I blogged about some time ago, I hope that Nanga fits in to his new life at the LWC where eventually, one day, he may be released back into at least a semi-natural environment. Until then, he is in the best possible hands.

Dr. Bethan Morgan is a Conservation Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s CRES.

Here’s more information about Bethan’s project.

Pandas are thought to experience one ovulation event each mating season, unlike some other bear species for which evidence suggests multiple ovulations occur. During this ovulation event, the female may release more than one egg to be fertilized. Once conception has occurred, the egg(s) develop slightly to a stage in which they comprise a small number of cells. They then enter a phase of embryonic diapause (also called delayed implantation). During the diapause stage, the fertilized egg doesn’t develop further into a panda fetus. It simply bides its time inside the reproductive tract, waiting for the cue to begin growing into a panda cub. Some bear species, such as the sun bear, are thought to have very short windows of diapause, on the order of 10 to 25 days. In a panda, the delay in implantation takes something on the order of 3 to 6 months.

Shortly after breeding, the panda female’s progestin hormones will show a bit of a rise. This is her body’s way of preparing itself for pregnancy. We can measure this rise in progestin by looking at Bai Yun’s urine. Unfortunately, at this point it cannot tell us if Bai Yun is harboring fertilized eggs somewhere in her body, because even pseudo pregnant females (ones that don’t ultimately give birth) have this same progestin profile.

So we wait. At some point, a trigger occurs that signals the fertilized egg(s) to implant and begin their growth. To date, we don’t know what that cue is. Is it time, food availability, or photoperiod? We aren’t sure, but photoperiod is a likely candidate.

The progestins rise dramatically about 45 days prior to a birth. We suspect this rise occurs around the time implantation is occurring, though that has not been confirmed. However, even pseudo pregnant females experience a rise of this sort, so we still can’t rely entirely on hormones to tell us that a cub is on the way. We would expect that Bai Yun’s behavior will begin to change once the large progestin rise occurs, as she becomes more interested in denning up. Again, similar behavior changes are observed in the pseudopregnant female.

The first confirmation we will likely have that Bai Yun is actually gestating a panda cub or two will be via ultrasound. Veterinarians have been able to see supporting structures surrounding a fetus about 17 days prior to a cub birth. That’s when we will know for sure that Bai Yun is not pseudopregnant.

However, even seeing a fetus via ultrasound doesn’t guarantee a panda cub birth. We know, based on past ultrasounds, that Bai Yun has twice been pregnant with twins. However, she has never given birth to twins. Her body reabsorbed a second fetus each time twins were discovered. It is possible that this may be very common in pandas.

Stay tuned to find out more about Bai Yun’s progression through the birthing season. I will let you know when we see the major milestones of a pregnancy/pseudopregnancy. But be aware it will be quite some time before we can say for sure that Bai Yun is pregnant!

Suzanne Hall is the senior research laboratory technician for the Giant Panda Conservation Unit of Applied Animal Ecology/CRES.

On the way back to Limbe, after an excellent trip to the big city, we were not alone. The day before, government officials from Ministry of Forests and Wildlife, acting on information received via the Last Great Ape Association, a non-governmental organization specializing in wildlife law enforcement, arrested an animal dealer and confiscated a baby chimpanzee. The chimpanzee was taken to the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Foundation. The next day, we helped out by taking the baby to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, where he will be looked after for the foreseeable future.

The car journey was more chaotic than usual. We traveled on Saturday, May 19. May 20 is National Day in Cameroon, and the whole of the city center was blocked to traffic to prepare for the enormous parades that take place in front of the head of State each year. It took us more than an hour to get to the edge of the city, stopping periodically to ask for directions along the unmarked and unnamed streets; since all the traffic was diverted, we witnessed three accidents before we even left the city!

Throughout, the baby chimp, named Nanga Eboko (the name of the village from where he came), was as good as gold, sitting on my lap, peering out of the car window, and attracting rather more attention than I’d hoped. We soon put up a towel over the window as I didn’t want people to think that we were interested in “buying” chimpanzees. Nanga slept fitfully, and I inspected him carefully. He had a broken, or at least semi-healing, right leg, and two prominent lumps, one just below his rib cage and one on his left leg. Imagine my horror when I realized these lumps were shotgun pellets. This means that Nanga was probably with the hunter or trader for more than a few weeks before he was rescued.

None of that seemed to affect his appetite. During the six-hour journey he ate two bananas, although he refused the milk we brought. On arrival at the Limbe Wildlife Centre, Felix Lankester, the manager, and a battery of onlookers met us. Veterinarian Felix believes Nanga to be about 14 months old and hopes to be able to operate to remove the pellets in the near future, once Nanga has settled down and started to play and become more relaxed. Nanga now has a permanent surrogate mother: volunteer Jodie, who is from Colorado. Jodie will look after him 24 hours a day for the next 6 weeks.

There are a few messages to take home from this incident. Although the details are still sketchy, it is clear that a wide range of agencies, from government to wildlife-based organizations, all cooperated to apprehend the trader and bring Nanga to safety. We helped only a little, but we hope that Nanga’s story will illustrate once more the individual trauma that results from the commercial bushmeat trade. It is certain that Nanga was shot while clinging to his mother, and that the same shotgun pellets that killed her entered his body. His mother would have been sold for bushmeat; he would not have fetched a good price due to his size, so would have been sold as a “pet.” One thing is for certain: this little chimpanzee is only a symptom of a more serious malady of society, the commercial trade in buying and selling bushmeat.

Dr. Bethan Morgan is a Conservation Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s CRES.

Read Bethan’s previous blog, Recent Botanical Research in the Ebo Forest

Several years ago, Bethan chose Limbe as the headquarters of the ZSSD/CRES Ebo forest research project so it made sense for us to stop off there to make our final arrangements for our own trip into the rain forest. Our timing was planned so that we would attend Bethan’s conservation education workshop (see Bethan’s blog, Cameroon: Teaching Hunters about Conservation). This was an extremely useful experience for us as we got to see Limbe’s Wildlife Centre (and its primate inhabitants, many of which we hoped to encounter in the forest, too) and also meet with local hunters who were in attendance to learn more about viable alternatives to their involvement in the bushmeat trade.

With the realities of primate hunting still fresh in our minds, we left Limbe for a long off-road journey to the village of Iboti. We arrived there early evening and met with the chief of the village to explain our plans for the field. The villagers were very excited to see us and it was immediately obvious to me that their relationship with Bethan was one of deep respect and trust. The following day, Fred Bercovitch and I hiked for around seven hours before making our final ascent to the research camp. We were immediately welcomed by Bethan’s research team and for the first time that day found time to take in our surroundings.

At the heart of the primary rain forest the vegetation is extremely thick and it becomes obvious that Ebo is amazingly fertile. Just a brief glance around gives you an idea about the density of flora and fauna here. At that time, it was also apparent that these inhabitants also make a great deal of noise! As we were interested in studying how these animals communicate, hearing so much conversation was very exciting. The following morning, we learned that Bethan’s team members were not only hospitable but also masters in this type of habitat. You can imagine our delight when we heard and were able to record four different species of guenons on that very first morning!

The goal of our pilot study was to try and record vocalizations from as many of these rare and endangered primates as possible. In some cases, we discovered that finding monkeys to record is only the first step of the process. Insects produce a loud cacophony of sound and when trying to capture primate calls you have to be careful to get your recording levels right or you’ll just come home with the musings of cicadas! Often, other animals such as (very) loud frogs and several parrot species also want to impress you with their singing. Indeed, on many occasions my recordings of primates were thwarted by the dulcet tones of a pair of African gray parrots chatting loudly right above us! This said, such problems (along with the intense humidity) are not insurmountable and over the course of the following two weeks I was able to get wonderful examples of most of the primates that live in the Ebo forest. An especially rare treat was hearing a troop of chimpanzees calling very near to us. They are experts at hiding, so we did not manage to see them, but I was able to record a bout of pant–hoots. Before you hear the chimps you’ll also hear all the other inhabitants chiming in.

We also heard and recorded drills (a very rare and endangered Old World monkey and the main focus of Bethan’s ongoing research at Ebo ).

Overall, our efforts yielded an amazing collection of calls, especially given the relatively short amount of time we spent in the forest. In 10 days we captured the calls of 8 of the 11 resident nonhuman primate species in the Ebo forest. As a result, we realized that the Ebo forest is an amazing resource that must be preserved and whose inhabitants should be studied more in the future.

Matt Anderson is a scientist in the Behavioral Biology Division of the San Diego Zoo’s CRES.

Read Matt’s previous blog, Singing in the Rain.
Read Bethan’s blog, Recording the Primates of the Ebo Forest.

This particular afternoon, Kilat scaled a new tree, one that I’d never seen her climb before. It was a young eucalyptus tree, so the trunk wasn’t very big. Kilat has a climbing style that looks as if she is hugging the tree as she climbs it. Honestly, she had climbed about 10 feet into this tree and was almost at the end of the leash when she stopped and started staring at the roof of our compound, which was another 10 feet from where she had placed herself. She looked at the roof, looked down at the ground, back at the roof, and in an instant had launched herself into the air. While still in the air, she kicked out to give herself an extra boost. Well, she cleared the gap between the tree and the building, which was quite impressive. And when she landed with a boom, one had to wonder who was sleeping under that section of the compound! She never slowed down, just kept right on walking over leaves and branches that had collected from the last rainstorm. All in a day’s work–well, for a clouded leopard, maybe!

Maureen O. Duryee is an animal trainer at the San Diego Zoo’s Hunte Amphitheater.

Walking Our Clouded Girls Is Heavenly.

Shikari and her sister, Chinook, were found in November of 1995 on the outskirts of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. They were about 11 months old and much too young to survive a harsh Arctic without a mother’s protection and teachings. Manitoba Conservation rescued them and found a temporary home for them at an animal park in Quebec. Five months later they arrived at the San Diego Zoo’s brand-new exhibit, Polar Bear Plunge (Shikari is on the right in the image below). Many will remember our dear, sweet female bear Bonnie. At 32 years old, Bonnie became an auntie of sorts to both the young “girls.” Chinook and Shikari were collectively called “The Girls” from then on. Shikari formed a special attachment to Bonnie, often trying to sleep next to her on exhibit. It soon became apparent that of the two sisters, Shikari was the most sensitive and often in need of extra understanding and encouragement.

In 1997, two rambunctious young males named Buzz and Neil joined our group and were nicknamed “The Boys.” Although the smallest of all our bears, Shikari always had The Boys on the run! A favorite game for her was to take a broken piece of Boomer ball, place it across her face as a mask and chase everyone around the exhibit! She would also swim underwater and stealthily nip their paws as they hung off the deep-water point and slept.

Through the years of roommate changes, Shikari and her sister kept an incredible bond. Of course they had their spats, but so often we found them curled together sleeping. They stilled played together in the pool and were absolute professionals at snow play. Shikari especially carved out wonderful snow beds and often lounged all night. In the bedrooms, Shikari always brought cardboard, hay, and burlap into neat piles with raised areas for pillows. We forever tried to make the beds for her, but she would move all of our efforts to another area of the bedrooms.

Shikari was sensitive and complex. She did not trust easily. But once you earned that trust, it knew no bounds. Working with her on research projects was so rewarding. She seemed to enjoy learning new things, and the more complicated the task, the better she did. During the hearing study, she was so enthusiastic when we reached the most difficult sounds. She also seemed to enjoy the times as we sat, eye to eye, during the sessions. She even made up a game. To keep from inadvertently giving her clues that a tone was played, I would make facial movements. After a few sessions of this, Shikari began mimicking my movements. Throughout the study she would often initiate this game but would never forget to respond to the tones. A true multitasker! I will never forget that on the day her illness became so apparent to us, she insisted we do one last session. Of course she was perfect.

As our incredible veterinary staff went to all extremes to help our beautiful girl, we all saw that whatever had made her ill was going to take her from us. We still don’t have the answers. But we do have incredible memories of a very special, intelligent, and almost magical animal. Shikari so captured our souls. We deeply mourn her loss, but we now must celebrate everything she taught us.

JoAnne Simerson is mammal keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

However, on Sunday, April 15, this all changed when the CRES Research Station provided a temporary workstation for the Park’s Education Department and its Conservation Corps. Spearheaded by Education Specialist Andy Schucker, 35 high school students were brought to the isolated research area to build environmental enrichment items to encourage natural behaviors.

Extensive research of the cheetahs’ natural history and decades of managed-care observations have shown that these animals generally enjoy resting upon elevated areas such as the top of hills, dirt mounds, kopjes, etc. to secure a bird’s-eye view of their potential prey and/or predators. With this in mind, and a pile of wood planks in hand, it was decided that the Conservation Corps would build two elevated platforms for a couple of our cats whose pens have little to no topographic variation. Armed with an ample work force, Andy and his team of young conservationists set to work enriching our cats’ lives.

With blueprints in hand, each student took part in the construction of the platforms. Every one of them engaged in sawing, drilling, and hammering. The afternoon became quite the arena for cooperation and teamwork and was an informative vehicle for all involved. The students were divided into two groups. While one group worked, another received a unique opportunity to tour the Research Station. Equipped with an arsenal of knowledge from Andy and the Education Department, the aspiring conservationists were not only sponges for absorbing the information presented to them, but incredibly astute at asking questions that would impress even the keenest of college professors. Upon completion of the second tour, it became quite apparent that all of the students were possessed with an admirable passion for knowledge, research, and an overwhelming desire to aid in our efforts here at CRES and the Zoological Society as a whole.

After a day’s worth of exhaustively preparing the two wooden platforms, the time had come to introduce our cheetahs’ to their new “look-outs.” A six-year-old female named Pula and a seven-year-old male named Noka were the proud recipients of the new furniture. While both notoriously have a penchant for rambunctiousness and mischief, they were given a little added incentive (extra meat) on top of their platforms to help speed along the investigative processes. It didn’t take long for either to examine the new additions to their territories, nor did it take long for them to acclimate to them. Today, it is not uncommon for both Pula and Noka to use the platforms that a group of ambitious, conservation-minded students built on their own time.

All the keepers at the CRES Research Station would like to express our gratitude and thanks to Andy Schucker and the Education Department for not only helping us to build enrichment for our animals but also providing the opportunity to solidify conservation programs for our local community. We would also like to thank the Conservation Corps for offering their time to help our animals. It is quite apparent that with all the passion exhibited on this afternoon, the planet’s animals and their habitats, will be in good hands.

William Hieber is a keeper in the CRES Behavioral Biology Division and the Wild Animal Park Mammal Department.

Read another blog about the Research Station’s cheetahs: Pombe’s Big Adventure

Jo collected well over 300 different plant species during this time. One copy of each species is kept in the National Herbarium of Cameroon in the capital, Yaoundé, and the rest are to be sent overseas to the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where they are available to the rest of the botanic world for taxonomic identification purposes and to document their existence in this part of Africa.

Victor Nana, National Herbarium of Cameroon, with an amazing flowering Rubiaceae plant

CRES has had a long-standing relationship in Cameroon with specialist botanists from both Yaoundé and Kew for more than five years, and we host regular visits from international experts. In April, we hosted botanists from Yaoundé, Kew, and Wageningen, in the Netherlands. I joined their search as an enthusiastic amateur: I have been collecting plant species eaten by gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants, and drills for many years now but have little knowledge of other species, whose fruits may be eaten and thus dispersed by smaller animals (such as bats), or may disperse with air currents.

Barbara Mackinder takes a sample of the new legume tree species

There was one species in particular that Drs. Barbara Mackinder and Jan Wieringa wanted to find desperately: a large tree that has only been collected once, decades ago, but in the same region as the Ebo forest. It is a member of the Fabaceae (Bean Family). There is only one collection of the species known to science, and it had not even been named yet because insufficient flowers and fruits had been collected to allow for a full scientific description. Imagine our delight to find it on day one of the five-day trip within 300 meters of our research station! Not only that, but within a 10-yard radius of the tree were four other leguminous tree species, one of which is another unnamed species! This species will be named after the Ebo forest, one of what we anticipate to be many new species to be found in this forest, one of the last remaining gems of rain forest found in this biodiversity rich area of Africa.

Meanwhile, we are currently arranging for our second botanist volunteer to join our team starting in July, when she finishes her undergraduate degree. Emma Fenton has visited Ebo once before, with a team from Kew in 2005, and so knows a little of what to expect in the coming months of documenting and discovering the diversity of plant species in the Ebo forest.

Dr. Bethan Morgan is a Conservation Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s CRES.
Read Bethan’s previous blog, Recording the Primates of the Ebo Forest

photo by Jenny Elliott

Through the generous cooperation of the Rimatara people and the French Polynesia government, and in collaboration with the Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust, 27 ‘ura were taken from Rimatara and flown to Atiu where they were released and changed their citizenship to be called kura. Staff from CRES had the honor of helping to collect the birds using mist nets, caring for the birds in quarantine, and evaluating the birds’ condition to ensure that only healthy birds were taken to Atiu. The effort was a complete success. All the birds ate well, maintained weight within reasonable limits, and flew well upon release. What a relief to see the birds fly in their new home, cheered on by enthusiastic Maori chants wishing them well, a long life, and many chicks! (Alan is picture here with Queen Rongomatane Ariki and one of the 27 translocated birds.)

CRES staff is planning to return in the coming year to survey the island for kura to document survivorship and hopefully reproduction, the ultimate goal of a successful program. A fine sight it will be to see the kura once again established on Atiu.

Alan Lieberman is a conservation program manager at CRES.

Here’s more information about lories and lorikeets.