ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE: HUGE POPULATION OF CHIMPANZEES DISCOVERED IN CONGO After weeks of slogging through thigh deep mud on hired motorbikes, passing dozens of bushmeat vendors offering everything from okapi skins to monkey meat to chained chimpanzee orphans, Dr. Thurston C. Hicks and his colleagues had finally arrived at their goal: they were sitting in a clearing in the legendary Gangu Forest, one of the most remote and pristine stretches of wilderness remaining in Africa. In this ancient seasonally flooded forest, the team had just come across the most exciting pile of leaves they had ever encountered. This was the ground nest of a hitherto undocumented chimpanzee population (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in an area near the town of Bili in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), just south of the border of the Central African Republic. Their recent study, published in Biological Conservation, describes this new population of chimpanzees, which forms a continuous cultural group inhabiting an area of at least 50,000 square kilometers (19,000 square miles). The discovery of this new group is particularly important as chimpanzee populations face ever-mounting pressures from agriculture, logging, and mining. In addition, the precarious state of Congolese politics leads to bushmeat poaching by roving militias living off the land. Fortunately, the area has been spared much of the brutality of the civil war that has ravaged other parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Nevertheless, Hicks has faced no end of obstacles in his own work, once being held at an airstrip for hours by dissatisfied corrupt officials and their gun-wielding guards who felt they weren’t getting their fair “cut” – a bribe for working in the area. Just last year the team returned from the field to find their base camp burnt to the ground by unknown assailants. But the researchers’ drive to learn more about the chimpanzees keeps drawing them back, unperturbed by the difficult conditions and frequent setbacks. While the discovery is a hopeful sign and a reminder of the wild places that persist in our Google-mapped world, Hicks was quick to caution that the area needs protection to keep it from the exploitation that has decimated chimpanzee populations throughout Africa. “It is vital that a team of wildlife guards from the Institut Congolais pour las Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) be permanently installed in the area, to help the locals protect their wildlife heritage from invading gold miners and elephant poachers,” he said Read more at news.mongabay/2014/0520-moll-rocek-chimps-drc.html#AkiwgTyUJoKRbbCd.99
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 02:39:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015