Gorilla Doctors

Category: Monitoring Visits, Orphaned Mountain Gorillas | Date: Dec 09 2007 | By: admin

View of Lake Kivu just north of Goma, DRC, site of recent rebel fighting.

Last week, the Congolese government launched attacks on the rebels hiding out near Goma and the DRC side of the Virungas park. Lawlessness in this region led earlier to the outright killing of at least a dozen mountain gorillas. Now people displaced by the war are taking what they need from the forest—cutting down trees to make charcoal for fuel, searching for fresh water, and hunting—in order to survive. Refugee camps are also multiplying, increasing the risk of the spread of infectious diseases to the gorillas. I hope Anderson Cooper’s story, due to air on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” draws attention to the fact that this war threatens the health of the entire DRC Virungas ecosystem: the people, the gorillas, and the forest.

Mountain gorilla orphans Ndeze and Ndakasi play on their wooden tripod, Goma, DRC.

The deteriorating situation around Goma, DRC, also threatens Ndakasi and Ndeze, the two orphaned mountain gorillas still being cared for there. I wrote in an earlier blog that we’d begun feeding them yogurt as a treatment for the diarrhea that has afflicted them off and on to help promote friendly intestinal flora, bacteria they would normally acquire from their mother’s. Unfortunately, they didn’t really like the yogurt, so we’ve switched instead to Acidophilus tablets in their milk. Now Jean Paul is running special stains on their feces so we can monitor the changes, if any. I’ve asked him to teach the field vets how to do this test. The orphans continue to present a learning opportunity for all of us at MGVP.

Border of Bwindi forest, Uganda, and cultivated land.

Meanwhile, an outbreak of Ebola virus has killed two dozen people in Uganda. It began in a town a considerable distance from our area, but the contagion is still closer to Bwindi and the Virungas park—and Rwanda—than it’s ever been before. This rapidly fatal hemorrhagic fever spreads through close contact with infected body fluids. Infection in humans has been linked to the practice of eating bush meat, particularly primates and fruit bats. This virus has also killed thousands of lowland gorillas and chimpanzees elsewhere in Central Africa. Though it has never been reported in mountain gorillas, we consider them highly susceptible. The disease is so nasty that relatively few—people or animals—survive the infection long enough to infect others, so Ebola rarely spreads great distances. Even so, we’re all on alert as the situation progresses.

Infant mountain gorilla Umoja in Kwitonda Group, Rwanda.

Despite the November and December rains, we have not yet had a case of respiratory illness among the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and the mild coughs in Uganda’s Nkuringo Group have resolved. We don’t know, of course, about the gorillas in DR Congo. All we can do is carry on with our jobs in the places where we can safely monitor the gorillas. When I made a routine health check to check on members of the Kwitonda Group this week, their pristine forest home seemed light years away from the war and the deadly Ebola; but it’s not.

Agahozo, growing up, in Pablo Group, Rwanda.

During my first month on the job in last year’s rainy season, there was a severe outbreak of flu-like respiratory disease in Rwanda’s Pablo Group that led to the death of several infants. Just as the group began to recover, poachers at the Rwanda-Congo border splintered the family, separating infants from mothers and leading to the death of those who were too young to survive the sudden weaning. Every time I see the lone survivor, Agahozo, united again with his mother in Pablo Group, I think of the need to prevent these incursions from the outside—poaching and the introduction of human disease.

Mountain gorilla infant Segasira in Kuryama Group, Rwanda.

I did respond to a call about a coughing gorilla last week, fearing this could be the start of a new outbreak. The trackers had reported a persistent cough the day before in two-and-a-half year old Segasira, an infant male in the Kuryama (research) Group. He wasn’t coughing during my visit, however, and appeared perfectly normal. He’d probably had what we call a “gallium” cough. This sticky plant often catches in the back of a gorilla’s throat, causing irritation that produces coughing. Because we know that coughs and sneezes can be intermittent, it’s always a good idea to stay in the group for at least an hour to be certain there’s no problem. So I took plenty of time to watch Segasira playing, eating, and tumbling with the other youngsters in order to make sure he was okay—the best part of the job.

Magayane has recovered completely from the loss of the end of one finger from a poacher’s snare (Kwitonda Group, Rwanda.)

A group of us met at MGVP’s offices in Ruhengeri recently to review what we know about Ebola, and to discuss the increasing number of refugee camps nearby in DR Congo, to be certain we’re all sharing information as it comes in. The meeting was also an opportunity to go over all of the guidelines in place to protect the health of the mountain gorillas from tourists, scientists, park staff, and the military. We agreed the Ebola outbreak in Uganda is not so close that we recommend action must be taken, like closing border crossings or access to the park. But everything could change very rapidly if the infection should spread in our direction.

Two years ago, the silverback mountain gorilla named Kwitonda moved his family to Rwanda from DR Congo Rwanda, and he hasn’t gone back.

For general information on Ebola, check Centers for Disease Control

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola.htm

Sciencedaily is a readable website with many more links about this disease

http://www.sciencedaily.com/search/?keyword=ebola

For news updates on Ebola as well as the DRC Congo War, check Reuters

http://www.alertnet.org/

See also various blogs on wildlifedirect for more about Virungas park DRC

http://wildlifedirect.org/

Technorati : DRC, Ebola, Rwanda, Uganda, mountain gorillas

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