Later in the day, Magda, Jean Felix, and I met to map out our intervention plan. We would anesthetize only the mother to start with, then evaluate the infant as quickly as possible. I preferred not to anesthetize him unless absolutely necessary. His pale mucous membranes worried me. We couldn’t draw many conclusions from a [...]
Part 1: Itchy Infant As we hiked the trail to Isabukuru Group, I didn’t feel very optimistic. It was my turn to check on Mushya, a 10-month-old infant of a first-time mother. The baby had steadily been losing body condition, and Karisoke trackers now reported that he seemed suddenly weaker and was losing more hair. [...]
One of our project’s main goals is to promote a healthier environment for people as well as gorillas. This is the one-health medicine concept. We can prevent medical problems in the gorillas by preventing problems in other species, including domestic animals, other wildlife, and humans–even entire ecosystems. As vets, we can deal with the animals, [...]
Umugisha with her infant Umurage on November 12, 2008 in Amahoro Group. Last week seemingly punched a hole in my rule of threes. Another mountain gorilla died in Rwanda—the fourth in two weeks. I was shocked when Elisabeth, the vet tech for ORTPN, called to say that Umugisha (ooh-moo-gee-sha), an adult female in Amahoro Group, [...]
Shinda Group in November 2008: The silverback Shinda sleeps in the background with female Pasika and black back Wageni in the foreground. Forgive me for not blogging over the last few weeks, and for returning with a sad report about the deaths of several gorillas. We didn’t have the opportunity to treat these individuals, [...]
