Chimpanzee rescued from a tiny cage
An adult chimpanzee that was suffering physical and emotional problems after being held illegally in a tiny cage in the business district of Kigali, Rwanda, was transferred this week to the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya.
The male chimpanzee, who is believed to be approximately eight years old, was found in a dirty steel cage measuring 1 x 1 x 1.5 meters that had no water supply, no roof, and no flooring.
The chimpanzee arrived in Kenya on February 22 and is currently being held in quarantine in Nairobi (pictured at right). After he is cleared, the chimpanzee will permanently join Sweetwaters’ population of 41 chimpanzees at the sanctuary near Mount Kenya.
Sweetwaters is a charter member of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA).
“The chimpanzee was very excited to fully stretch and climb up the new cage that is in much more spacious than compared to where he had been for the last 6-7 years,” said Sweetwaters manager Martin Mulama.
The chimpanzee was believed to have been kept as a pet in Rwanda before growing too large. He lost a great deal of body hair due to stress and exhibited some aberrational behavior, such as head-banging, due to his small cage. But the chimpanzee’s overall health status was confirmed following a check-up by staff members from the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP), and his transfer was facilitated by the Rwanda Office of Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN).
PASA was formed in 2000 to unite the sanctuaries that care for chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, drills and literally thousands of other endangered primates across Africa. For more information, please visit www.pasaprimates.org or contact PASAapes@aol.com.
Large scale poaching
in Africa parks
Washington (02/3/2008)
A new report released by TRAFFIC last month, the wildlife trade monitoring
network, and WWF finds that the lack of meat in refugee rations in East Africa
is causing a flourishing illegal trade in wild meat, threatening wildlife
populations and creating a food security issue for rural communities.
The report "'Night Time Spinach': Conservation and livelihood implications of wild meat use in refugee situations in north western Tanzania," uses case studies from Kagera and Kigoma in Tanzania, host to one of the largest concentrations of refugees in the world, and the largest in Africa.
Illegally-obtained wild meat is covertly traded and cooked after dark and referred to as 'night time spinach' inside many refugee camps.
"The scale of wild meat consumption in East African refugee camps has helped conceal the failure of the international community to meet basic refugee needs," says Dr George Jambiya, the main author of the report. "Relief agencies are turning a blind eye to the real cause of the poaching and illegal trade: a lack of meat protein in refugees' rations," he added.
Sheer numbers of refugees often leads to extensive habitat degradation and dramatic loss of wildlife in affected areas, with rare species like chimpanzees threatened by the demand for meat. Buffalo, sable antelope and other large mammals have also shown steep declines.
Since Tanzanian independence in 1961, more than 20 major refugee camps have been located close to game reserves, national parks or other protected areas; 13 of them still remained in 2005. In the mid-1990s, an estimated 7.5 tons of illegal wild meat was consumed weekly in the two main refugee camps.
TRAFFIC says that refugees are doubly penalized: their rights to minimum humanitarian care are not always being met and their own attempts to meet them are criminalized. In contrast, humanitarian assistance to displaced populations in Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia during the early 1990s included the provision of corned beef.
"The solution here is not simply clamping down on the illegal trade in Tanzania, there is a need for aid, humanitarian and conservation groups to avoid creating challenges like this in the first place," said Crawford Allan, Director of TRAFFIC North America. "We must avoid the cycle of human suffering compounded by the loss of wildlife."
Trade in wild meat is less expensive than local beef and culturally more desirable for many refugees, also offering refugees the chance to generate income. That's despite official Tanzanian refugee policy discouraging self-reliance within the camps. Conservation organizations believe the key is to supply meat from legal and sustainable wild meat supplies, as well as rigorous law enforcement on the ground.
"Overexploitation of wildlife for food is a no-win situation in which everyone suffers, not to mention the huge loss of biodiversity," said Matthew Lewis program officer for WWF's Species Conservation Program. "It's vital that humanitarian organizations concentrate their efforts on guaranteeing food security for refugees which includes a sustainable source of animal protein."
The report recommends closer partnerships between wildlife and humanitarian agencies, which have already showed progress to address other environmental impacts of refugee camps such as deforestation.
WWF working to save Sumatran
Tigers
Central Sumatra's tiger and elephant habitat has
declined drastically in the past two decades, with many animals now isolated
from each other in small pockets of forest. WWF is working to stop further
clearing of natural forest in the area and to reconnect isolated fragments of
habitat via wooded wildlife corridors. There are estimated to be fewer than 500
Sumatran tigers left in the wild.
If you live in the United States you can help support tiger conservation projects in Sumatra at places like Tesso Nilo National Park by calling or write a letter to your representative in Congress and asking him or her to support increased federal dollars allocated to five separate funds dedicated to in-country conservation of great apes, African elephants, Asian elephants, rhinos and tigers, and marine turtles. The five Multinational Species Conservation Funds administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service are authorized to receive $5 million apiece annually, yet Congress has never appropriated more than $1.4 million per year per program. There is public support for such an increase. For example, an online poll conducted by Newsweek Magazine in August of 2007 revealed that 65% of 13,396 respondents said that they would be willing to pay higher taxes in order to protect endangered species. Americans care about the world’s wildlife and regularly show their support for conservation at zoos and aquariums that attract over 143 million visitors a year.
