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Photo courtesy WildlifeDirect
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| Field assistants using a GPS system in the Lomami Bonobo Survey. |
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John Hart of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Ashley Vosper are leading two teams of trackers and porters, slogging through wet forests in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo looking for bonobos. Years of civil war drove many scientists out of DRC so we have no firm idea of how many bonobos survive and where. The eastern limit of bonobo range has never even been verified. Yet this information is desperately needed for conservation planning and action.
Early results are heartening. In the first transects, in the "forgotten landscape" between the Lomami and Lualaba Rivers, where bonobos had not been seen since before 1980, Vosper's team found a startlingly high density of bonobo nests. They discovered nests in areas where bonobos were not known to exist and found evidence that bonobos were venturing from the forest into savanna. They also found evidence of hunting bonobos. Follow this work on Vosper's blog, (warning: it's graphic in spots).
The Trust has provided $10,500 for one of the two expeditionary teams to purchase a solar powered Internet satellite communication device, which is operated from a canoe in the middle of rivers (otherwise the forest canopy interferes with the communication). This system allows data to be transmitted back to secure storage (rain forests are bad data storage environments), supports the blog which is an incredible public education platform, and allows aid to be summoned quickly in the event of emergency. |
