It Takes a Village to Save a Species

Dr. Jo Thompson, PhD, studies bonobos in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She involves the local people in grassroots decisions about protecting the bonobo, and she provides benefits like employment and community improvement. The photos show Thompson with her workers and the park guards that she supports. From a recent email, Jo writes about how she works at obtaining consensus from the villagers.

"For now we continue to support the work of ICCN in the Anga Secteur of Parc National de la Salonga, strengthen our relationship with the Iyaelima people living exclusively inside the national park, continue lobbying and monitoring across the whole of the Lukuru zone of influence and maintain our focused energies around the Bososandja forest block. In addition, we meet annually with the greater population of the region; a formal reunion with the local population, representatives of all clans, traditional chiefs, and authorities.

"This typically involves a three-day commitment of exchange. We update the communities on the activities of the Lukuru Project, discuss their ideas about our role, and exchange assurances. The population reports on their conservation activities and challenges. So for example, last year we discussed the problem of poachers around Yasa for commercial bushmeat trade.

"The annual meetings involve a lot of back-and-forth, emotion and shared humor. Over the course of the days of meeting, the population sequesters themselves periodically to talk amongst themselves and then come back to me formally with thoughts. Often their requests are either out of the purview of the Lukuru Project or unrealistic. But, we always strive to have a common outcome.

"Some of the current obligations made on behalf of the Lukuru Project are:

1) I have agreed to bring an engineer to Yasa to evaluate the suitability for sinking a tube well.

2) I have agreed to research the process of making soap. There will be further discussion about this based on what I learn.

3) The population has requested that the Lukuru Project have a professional garde formation. I have agreed to recruit addition personnel for the Bososandja. This will entail formal training and equipping.

4) The population wants assistance to build houses to help host guests in the future.

5) I have agreed to provide tin roofing for the school and help develop the curriculum. They requested that I build a house for the Lukuru Project in the village."

Photos by R. Ross

Meta, the Crocodile Girl

Meta, Fille de Croco, was the first "conservation tale" told in Bleu/Blanc. This story, told as a cartoon, was in a series, with each episode ending in a cliffhanger that built interest in reading the upcoming issue.

The story is somewhat familiar: Meta, an orphan, was overworked and mistreated by her aunt. She lost a plate while washing dishes at the river, and was told to not come home until she found it. Despondent, the girl ended up searching for the plate on the savanna, where she had adventures with helpful crocodiles, elephants, and zebras. The story ends well, with Meta finding plates to take back to the village.

The artwork and story of Meta was a cut above anything locally available, and that translated to a large readership for Bleu/Blanc. It was estimated that every magazine was shared with friends, family, and neighbors, with at least ten readers per issue.

Lowry Park Zoo Manatee video

The Lowry Park Zoo is one of the places were injured, incapacitated, or infant manatees are transported to be rehabilitated. Some of the animals are returned to the wild at the same site that they were taken, and fitted with tracking devices to monitor their progress. Other manatees have such debilitating wounds that they must remain in captivity, so they are placed on permanent exhibit loan to any one of several institutions that can hold them.

A large network of collaborating specialists participate in the surveillance, research, rescue, transport, rehabilitation, and finally, release or long-term care of these slow moving mammals. Those animals on exhibit in zoos serve as educational messages about how human interaction is harmful to manatees (the most common natural hazard is red tide).

Mankind is responsible for the outflow of warmed water from industry or water treatment plants that can prevent normal migration for winter, causing cold stress and death. Manatees can get caught in or ingest fishing equipment. By far, the most dangerous thing for manatees are boats. White propeller scars on the back of animals or missing parts of flippers and tails attest to the cruel reality of "boat strike" injuries.

The video shows one, then two more manatees feeding on romaine lettuce, and then the same animals from above, in the public area of Lowry Park Zoo. The propeller scars are clearly seen. At the Zoo, severely compromised animals in rehabilitation are kept in "medical" tanks off exhibit.

Video by: D. Messinger

Columbus Zoo Conservation Report

To meet American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) standards, member institutions must include conservation as a key element in their mission statement. Some facilities now produce annual conservation reports that show how the institution is helping conserve wild populations.

The above is an annual conservation report from the Columbus Zoo, a leader in in situ (range country) conservation. The beautifully illustrated booklet features the bonobo. AZA zoos and aquariums are supporting sustainable biodiversity and are sharing their stories with members and visitors.

To learn more about Lola ya Bonobo, see http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/index.htm

Florida Panther in a Tree

White Oak Conservation Center, in north-east Florida, is a first-class research and breeding facility devoted to wildlife and habitat preservation. Located on 7,400 acres, with 600 acres developed for animals, the Center is an American Zoo and Aquarium (AZA) related facility with projects around the world, as well as locally.

White Oak is the only place in the country where injured or sick Florida panthers are nursed back to health and then rehabilitated back to the wild, in collaboration with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This endangered cat, high up in a tree, is seen in a 17 acre fenced pen. From this pen, a dozen total have been radio-collared and returned to the location of their capture. The hard stare of the cat belies its precarious position in only 5% of the original home range, in South Florida, where there is little suitable habitat left.

This species is not without controversy, because its status as a "subspecies" is not clear. Some scientists claim that all of the North American panthers (cougar, mountain lion, catamount, puma are synonyms) should be lumped into one species. At an estimated population of only 80 to 100 animals, the probable inbreeding has been mitigated by the infusion of Texas cougar genes. Consequences of inbreeding in the Florida panther has been cardiac disease and low sperm counts in males.

For more information about the White Oak Conservation Center, visit http://www.wocenter.org/index.asp?id=wocc/animals.asp

Photos by: D. Loeb

Truck Stuck

Traveling the "bush" for six months, stopping in remote villages to conduct research on monkeypox, meant that one needed to carry all needed supplies and equipment, including a portable short-wave radio to keep in touch with the World Health Office in the capital. Negotiating impassible roads in the center of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) meant that the equipment included metal skids, shovels, an electric wench, and a chainsaw for situations.

The top photograph shows the Toyota high-centering in a sandy road in Bandundu. Digging, putting grass, skids, or other traction under the wheels or using the "come-along" were all options. Often, when the ruts were very deep, the best tactic was to strike out across the virgin savanna on a parallel track. The unbroken grass provided good traction for a new road, but, over time, the ruts would get deeper and more eroded, until that, too, was abandoned for another path. In some places, there would be a dozen side-by-side roads, wandering and twisting through the savanna, in various stages of wear. It was a challenge to chose the best road.

The middle picture shows where we fell through a small bridge over a stream. Here, it was impossible to extricate ourselves, so after a few hours, we managed to signal our distress to a village, a few miles distant. The villagers were all to happy to enjoy the excitement of a passing vehicle, busted through a rotten spot on their bridge. Joking and laughing at their fortune, they picked up the truck's rear end and placed it back on better timbers.

Where was I? I was knee deep in the water, cooling off, taking pictures, and laughing at the absurdity of it all. I suspected that the villagers may had actually set up the bridge as a truck trap. There were so few vehicles passing in this area -- only a couple a month -- that perhaps this was the local taxation. Being Zaire, it was not out of bounds for Zairians to go to extraordinary lengths for a few dollars.

The last image is of the "one that didn't make it." Mungbau, the driver had to stop and get his picture taken by the upside down cab and trailer of what must have been a horrific accident. Usually, the metal from abandoned trucks was pulled off and recycled, but this area was too remote for such piracy.

Photos by: D. Messinger

Red Katydid

This bright red katydid had fallen out of the trees overhead in a forested area near Lodja, in the center of Zaire, now the Democratic of the Congo. I was awed by the brilliant, deep, solid red of the insect, and snapped a picture. I never saw another one.

Katydids are relatives of crickets, and can be distinguished from grasshoppers by their antennae that are as long or longer then their body. Their ovipositors (egg-laying tube) are also very long. They sing at night, with a raspy sound that is created from rubbing the forewings together. The name may come from "katy-did, katy-didn't."

It is not a surprise that I have never identified this insect. The Amazon is the home to 2,000 different species of katydids, so the tropical rainforest of the Congo could have at as many species as well. Various colors have been described for tropical katydids, including green, brown, white, pink, and yellow. Not red.

Curious Jays

This captivating photograph was taken in a free flight aviary called the "Emerald Forest"at the "Range of the Jaguar"exhibit at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. The two birds on the camera are plush-crested jays, which are South American representatives of the raven, crow, jay, rook, magpie, and jackdaw family otherwise known as "corvid."

Plush-crested jays are named for the stiff feathers on their heads. They have metallic purple-blue feathers, and light blue, wide eyebrows that give them a questioning demeanor. They are vocal and are known to mimic other birds in the wild. It is no surprise that they are bold and will investigate anything new in their environment.

Corvids are extremely intelligent, inquisitive birds that are equated to mammalian primates. However their brains do not have a complex cortex, rather another part of the brain, called the hyper-striatum, is highly developed. Larger corvids, such as ravens, are known to be able to count, up to seven!

A anecdote goes that hunters would go into a blind to shoot birds, and when this happened, the birds learned to make themselves scarce. When a hunter or two would leave the blind, the birds still wouldn't come back; they knew the number inside and wouldn't come back until ALL the men had exited the blind.

The photo was taken by Marian Brickner, who had the tables turned by the jays, who found her big lens an inviting and exciting object of exploration.

An Abandoned Village

This village, photographed in the vicinity of Djolu, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) was at the edge of the secondary forest on a tertiary road. As explained, the entire village had been abandoned when the chief had died -- the people had picked up all of their belongings and moved to a new site. It was said that a village might also move when the local resources had been exhausted as the result of too much human pressure on the fragile ecosystem.

That is one of the reasons that the maps I saw were so inaccurate. Villages named no longer existed as depicted, or they had moved to another place, and were the same name, or the name had been changed to "big such-and-such" or "new such-and-such." A perfect case of recycling, the left behind houses decayed and melted back into the earth, and eventually the land was engulfed again by forest.

Photo by D. Messinger

Otter in the Tube!

These three giant otters are enjoying taking turns in a carpet tube given as "enrichment." They are brothers, of two different litters, born at the Philadelphia Zoo, and placed on loan to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. After these photographs were taken, one of the siblings was transferred to the Dallas World Aquarium, to be paired with a female for breeding.

Giant otters love tight spaces, the more cramped the better. When I visited the Philadelphia Zoo in 2007, the staff showed off a small wooden box, about two feet on each side. They said that it was amazing that all of their giant otters -- parents, and cubs from both litters -- would crowd into the den to sleep.

Photos by M. Beshel

Lucy Bonobo Agile on Roof

Lucy, a young bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens carefully descends the rooftop at the highest point of the resting platform and shade structure on exhibit. Bonobos are extremely agile and they do not appear to fear heights.

Photo by M. Brickner

Dancing with Bats

I always like the top photo, because it looks like I am doing some kind of barefoot water ballet. Instead, Moseli, a nurse, and I were mist-netting for bats. I was a volunteer in the Peace Corps, on loan to the World Health Organization (WHO). We were trying to determine the wild animal reservoir for the virus that caused monkeypox in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

The mist net was so fine, that it was nearly invisible to the eye, and was typically strung across streams, which were used by many species of bats as highways (as opposed to dense forests, where there were many impediments to flights). A mist net could be bunched up into the size of a fist, and it was easily torn by the captured bats, which we extricated with care.

The bottom photo is Moseli holding a male hammer-headed bat, the largest bat in Africa. The males, weighing up to one pound, are twice the size of the females. They are sexually dimorphic, with males having large square heads, and a huge larynx that extends into the thorax, displacing the lungs and heart. The voice box is used to produce the loud calls to attract females.

Hammer-headed bats meet at "leks," or mating arenas, for copulation. The males gather first, in small groups, where they spread out and establish their territory. They call loudly, with honking, croaking squawks. The females follow the sounds that can be heard from a great distance and come to the lek to select their mate.

Lekking (from Swedish "to play") is a promiscuous mating system that is either classical, where visual cues are used, like the tail display of peafowl or exploded, where the attractant is vocal, such as that of the hammer-headed bat.

Lucy Bonobo Nursing Mom

Lucy, a five-year old bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens is still nursing her mother, Lorel. Although it seems like a long time for weaning, five years is not unusual for this highly social, highly intelligent ape. A lengthy dependency on mother insures enough time to learn bonobo skills, but it also means that each female can only give birth to a small number of offspring (nursing inhibits pregnancy) in the wild.

In the past, captive bonobo babies were taken from their mothers to be raised by humans, partly because the females, no longer lactating, would become pregnant again, and partly to attract visitors. "Pulling" infants, with the exception of legitimate medical reasons, is no longer allowed by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) bonobo Species Survival Plan (SSP).

Photo by M. Brickner

Lucy Tight-Walking Rope

Lucy, a young bonobo at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, shows off her astonishing sense of balance in this series of photographs. Not only does she agilely balance her way up a rope, but she does it with a ball in her left hand!

Photos by M. Brickner