MAY 14, 2007
VOLUNTEER UPADTE
At the moment we have five fantastic volunteers working at Mefou. All of them have really got stuck in to their work.
Sandy Jones is looking after two infant male chimps, Miko and Leyley, so her hands are full 24 hours a day. In the next few weeks both chimps will be joining the chimp quarantine group. Sandy’s job involves taking the youngsters into the forest every day so they can play and learn to climb and make nests. They sleep with Sandy as they still need a feed during the night.
Jo Savage and Ian Bickerstaff are working with the chimps in main quarantine, looking after the ten strong group of infant chimps (all under a year and a half) and one 30 year old adult female chimp called Coffeecake.
Elissa O’Sullivan is also working with quarantined 
chimps. These are older juvenile chimps that often play a little rougher!
Gal Yaron is a veterinary volunteer who assists Babila, 
the CWAF vet when needed. At the same time she is looking after Kinte a very active baby baboon, who will hopefully be reintroduced back into his baboon group soon.
EDUCATION UPDATE
CWAF’s education programme is still going strong. 
This month the team found that they had won funding from the British High Commission to expand the education work at Mefou. One of the first things they’ll be doing with money is building an outside classroom in the forest.
Over the next year the money will also provide transport for Yaounde and Mfou schoolchildren to come to enjoy the Mefou sanctuary and learn more about the apes and monkeys there. And it will be used to bring teachers together at Mefou so that they can share their knowledge about the environment and get more ideas on how to make conservation come alive in their classes back at school.
And that’s not all. By next April, 20 new environmental clubs in schools will be up and running all supplied with starter kits and supported by CWAF.
Dave Naish from Bristol Zoo was over with the Education team for a month in April to catch up on developments and help out wherever he could. One of his aims this trip was to help incorporate stories from the Dja into the CWAF’s education programme. The Dja area includes a biosphere reserve in the south of Cameroon; this and the forests around provide prime chimp and gorilla habitat. However they are also one of the areas that CWAF regularly receives baby gorillas from. Talking about the Dja and its people will help to complete more of the bushmeat jigsaw that is central to CWAF’s education programme.
BRUNO FLIES OUT
In March, Bruno one of CWAF’s gorilla keepers flew to the UK, for a three week placement with Bristol Zoo Gardens. The funding for the trip was provided by Gorilla Haven in Georgia, USA and Bruno put in a very strong application to win it against all the competition.
Bruno has now seen his first ever adult silverback. The gorilla group at Bristol includes an impressive 250 kg adult male called Jock who has fathered two babies in the last couple of years. Bruno works with sub-adult gorillas between 8 -11 years old in Mefou and the Bristol keepers tell us that Bruno was amazed when he saw how big Jock was. (Maybe he realised how big his charges would grow up to be!) He’s also had some time off to visit other zoological collections in the UK – London, Howletts and Monkey World, so he’ll have lots of stories to tell when he gets back.
We’d like to say a big thanks to Gorilla Haven and Bristol Zoo for their support with his trip.
INSECT INVASION
Currently, there are six volunteers at Mefou assigned numerous duties, most of them pertaining t<<Now that the wet season has started again, the army ants are on the move again. They are a formidable presence as they carve their way through the forest overpowering any animal that isn’t fast enough to get out of the way.
One night, staff were alerted by screams coming from the Monkey Nursery. They rushed over to find the floor black with ants and all the monkeys in a highly distressed state with the smaller ones covered with biting ants. Vala the baby colobus monkey had
fallen onto the ground and was almost buried under the swarm; she had ants blocking her nose and mouth and even her throat. They had to be picked off individually with tweezers. Fortunately Vala survived the experience and there were no casualties, but there’s no doubt that they would all have been eaten alive if they hadn’t been rescued in time.
The nursery is now surrounded by a trail of salt to head off any future ant hunting parties.
NEW GORILLA BABY
Pikin is CWAF’s most recent orphan gorilla 
arrival. She arrived, tiny, underweight and very traumatised, from a village in the East of Cameroon. Now just a month later she’s doubled in weight and has turned into a feisty eight month old. She teething at the moment so she loves to practise biting anything she can get her hands on. She’s being looked after in shifts by Rachel, Appolonaire and Thierry and will be slowly introduced to the gorilla nursery when she’s older.
