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Ebola virus hemorrhagic fever is a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans by direct contact with infected live or dead animals, and more specifically with their body fluid. Genetic and antigenic characterization of Ebola virus isolates during human outbreaks has led to the identification of four subtypes — Ebola Sudan, E. Zaire, E. Ivory Coast and E. Reston. Ebola Reston originates in Asia and has never been reported to cause human disease, but the other three subtypes circulate on the African subcontinent and are pathogenic for humans, causing a specific febrile hemorrhagic disease. After an incubation period of about 12 days, victims rapidly develop high fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, respiratory disorders and haemorrhaging. Death ensues within a few days. The case fatality rates are about 80% with E. Zaire and 50% with E. Sudan (Pourrut & al., 2005).

Chronology of the outbreaks

The first recorded outbreak of Ebola occurred in Sudan (due to the so called Ebola Sudan subtype), near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, between June and November 1976. A second outbreak occurred in the same region 3 years later, between July and October 1979. Meanwhile (August and November 1976), an outbreak due to E. Zaire occurred in DRC, near the borders with Sudan and the Central African Republic. This previously unknown disease was named for the river Ebola, which flows past Yambuku (epicentre of the outbreak in DRC). E. Zaire made a second but restricted appearance (only one case recorded) in DRC in June 1977.

After a 15-year period in which no further cases were recorded, Ebola re-emerged in 1994 for a 3-year period. This new phase was marked by the identification of a new subtype, E. Ivory Coast, and by an escalation of outbreaks due to E. Zaire. Ebola outbreak was recorded in the chimpanzees of Tai National Park (Ivory Coast) in June 1994 (Formenty et al., 1999), and an ethnologist became ill after autopsying a chimpanzee found dead in the Tai forest. It was the first and only human case observed in West Africa, and the only case clearly attributed to E. Ivory Coast. 25% of the 43 chimpanzees in the studied community were recorded to have died from the virus (Formenty et al., 1999). Regarding E. Zaire, the first outbreak of this period occurred in the town of Kikwit, about 500 km from Kinshasa (DRC), while three further outbreaks occurred in northeast Gabon: in Mekouka between 1994 and 1995, Mayibout in early 1996, and Booué between 1996 and 1997. Tough there is no proofs; those outbreaks in humans are suspected to be linked to a drastic decline recorded in great ape abundance in the Minkebe forest (Huijbregts & al., 2003). Indeed, Lahm (2000) reported a decrease of 90% in gorilla and 98% in chimpanzee abundance compare to her previous observations in the same area – before the 1994 and 1996 Ebola epidemics.

Since 2000, multiple outbreaks of E. Zaire occurred in a relatively limited area: the border region of Gabon and the Republic of Congo. Successive outbreaks occurred in Mekambo and Makokou, in Gabon (October 2001); Ekata and Olloba villages, in the Republic of Congo (November-December 2001). Then, the district and village of Mbomo, RC (entrance of Odzala National Park) suffered 3 successive outbreaks: March 2002; December 2002-May 2003; and October-December 2003. The source of these outbreaks are well documented, and all (some of which had multiple sources) occurred after people had handled animal carcasses found in the forest (mainly gorillas, chimpanzees and duikers). In Lossi Sanctuary (South of Mbomo), 91% of the individually known gorillas in Bermejo’s study groups (143 individuals in total) disappeared from October 2002 to January 2003; and 95.8% of individuals in the newly monitored groups were killed from October 2003 to January 2004 (Bermejo & al., 2006). By extrapolating from more wide-ranging transect surveys they conducted, Bermejo and her colleagues conclude that in a 2700 km2 region surrounding the Lossi Sanctuary, roughly 5000 gorillas have succumbed to the current epidemic. Further north, inside Odzala National Park, Ebola broke out at Lokoué study site in December 2003. The epidemic lasted for almost a year, and killed about 95% of the some 377 identified gorillas that formerly frequented the clearing (Caillaud et al., 2006). Devos & al., (submitted) reported that both gorillas and chimpanzees nest encounter rate decreased in the surrounding forest by 80-85%.

This period also saw a resurgence of E. Sudan, in Uganda between October 2000 and January 2001, and in Sudan, close to the previous outbreak sites of 1976 and 1979, in May-June 2004.

In brief

Since the discovery of Ebola virus in 1976, there have been 13 human outbreaks in Africa (nine due to E. Zaire and four to due to E. Sudan) and two isolated cases (due to E. Zaire and E. Ivory Coast). These outbreaks took place during three distinct periods (three between 1976 and 1979, four between 1994 and 1997, and six between 2000 and 2004). In total, Ebola virus infected about 1850 people and caused nearly 1300 deaths. The different Ebola virus subtypes showed a certain geographic pattern, E. Ivory Coast affecting West Africa, E. Sudan east Africa, and E. Zaire central Africa. The recurrent emergence of E. Zairesince the mid-1990s in Gabon and the Republic of Congo have been the most monitored and brought clues on the link between humans and wild animal mortality. In each case of human outbreak, simultaneously, nearby ape populations have experienced massive declines in numbers, with ape populations in certain forests falling by more than 90% in just a few years or months (Huijbregts et al., 2003; Walsh et al., 2003; Bermejo et al., 2006; Caillaud et al., 2006; Devos et al., submitted). Four populations of monitored apes are known to have been affected and/or decimated by the virus (chimpanzees of the Tai forest; both apes of the Minkebe forest, Lossi Sanctuary and Lokoué bai). Figures given are alarming as for example, the Lossi outbreaks only, killed about as many gorillas as survive in the entire eastern gorilla species (Gorilla beringei). Yet Lossi represents only a small fraction of the western gorillas killed by E. Zaire in the past decade: because of the difficulty of outbreak detection in wild animals (local populations must ideally be monitored before, during and after an epidemic event to be able to detect changes in numbers), it is very likely that other die-offs amongst tropical forest mammals occurred but haven’t been recorded, which means that the now acknowledged facts are most probably an under-representation of the real impact of Ebola virus on wild animals. The fear is that the spread of the virus continues among wild animal populations. Scientists still doesn’t know why and how Ebola virus has emerged so explosively in recent years: is the virus dormant in a natural reservoir – a forest species that could carry the virus without getting deathly ill? Bats have been suspected as such (Leroy et al., 2005). And if so, what are the environmental parameters that lead to its outbreak? (habitat disturbance, climate change,…?) Or whether the virus is mostly spread from an infected ape to its contacts?

Although both mechanisms of spread probably play a role, evidence are now growing that apes are indeed passing the virus to each other (Walsh et al., 2007): within social group, between social groups, and even between species. Threat on ape populations living in contiguous forest is thus very strong as ape-to-ape transmission act as an amplifier of Ebola outbreaks. Control measures need to be taken as soon as possible to avoid those once abundant and widely distributed ape species to become reduced to tiny remnant populations.

The primary reason that we are losing the fight to save Western gorillas is simply that not enough money is being spent. Conservation budgets in Central Africa are miniscule compared to what we are accustomed to paying for wildlife conservation in the developed world. The budget for a single large park in the US is larger than the annual conservation budget of an entire Central African nation. Unless public and private donors from the developed countries answer the call and substantially increase funding levels, Western gorillas and other large forest mammals will likely be driven to the brink of extinction over the next decade.

However, simply throwing more money around will not solve the problem. Saving Western gorillas will require a fundamental change in strategy. Many current strategies are either inappropriate for the conditions prevailing in Western gorilla range countries or operate on time scales that are too long to address the immediate crisis. What Western gorillas desperately need is a “Back to Basics” approach: a movement away from high flying conservation concepts and towards plain old, nuts and bolts natural resource management: particularly law enforcement and protected area management. Unfortunately, the conservation situation in Central Africa closely parallels developments in the “New Economy” over the last decade. Dotcoms became fabulously wealthy on the basis of innovative business plans and slick marketing but then crashed when they failed to deliver a product. Conservation in Central Africa has followed the same trajectory but the consequence of the crash is not a wave of bankruptcies but, rather, the devastation of Western gorillas and other large forest mammals. What we need at this point is a little less Dotcom thinking and a little more “Old Economy” action.

I was still holding out some hope for an Equatorial Guinea visa. Omar said he had good contacts with the Ambassador, but all day we were unable to reach Omar to arrange a time to go to the embassy; perhaps he was partied out?

Calling a press conference at short notice can often lead to an empty room.  Thanks to the combined efforts of Michael Adande, the Secretary General, and WCS, we managed two TV channels and a reporter from the Gabon Press Agency, plus the information officer from the Ministry.  We were rather late in starting, it is true, but we wanted Michael Adande to be there from the beginning. We gave a bit of background to the Year of the Gorilla but some of the journalists were clearly unhappy at being kept waiting.

Once the three speakers were ready, I was introduced and explained why I had originally hoped to hold this press conference at the Baraka Mission in Libreville.  It was there, in 1847, that an American missionary named Thomas Savage visited the resident missionary, Rev. Wilson.  He collected the type specimen of the gorilla which he co-described with Jeffries Wyman, a Harvard anatomist, in the December 1847 edition of the Boston Journal of Natural History.

I stressed Gabon’s important historic role in this regard, as well as outlining what efforts are being made now to ensure that the home of the first gorilla to be described by science continues as a range state for the species…The Secretary General gave the Government’s strong support and ended with what might become a catch-phrase, “2009 is the International Year of the Gorilla, but in Gabon, every year is the Year of the Gorilla!”

I’d been advised that journalists attending a press event are accustomed to receiving something towards their expenses, and Anne-Marie had picked up some ECOFAC Year of the Gorilla T-shirts, so after the cameras had been packed away we handed each person an envelope with a modest contribution plus a T-shirt.

A few minutes after we thought they had left to file their stories, the one who had been most put out by being kept waiting came back. The journalists’ revolt involved returning all the envelopes and T-shirts and complaining a lot about being given pocket money like children. Clearly this did not bode well for getting our message out to the people of Gabon, so I asked what the normal rate was.  The answer was about five times what I’d given them, but after some discussion they settled for 3 times the original amount per channel rather than per person. Honour was satisfied and although I felt like I’d just been mugged, the press conference should be broadcast the next day.

That evening I was contacted by a local NGO named PROGRAM.  We agreed to meet over supper and I learned of their project to develop a community-friendly eco-tourism project in Moukalaba Doudou National Park.

Today didn’t quite work out as planned.  Early in the morning I bumped into the vice-governor of South Kivu province, Jean Claude Kibala, who I’d met at the Frankfurt Gorilla Conference and who was busy making arrangements for President Kabila, who was visiting Bukavu.  I asked him whether he thought the President would give a message for the Year of the Gorilla.  He thought it quite likely, given the economic importance of gorilla tourism in the region, and said he’d call this evening if it could be arranged.

The Australian Network 7 film crew, minus the producer and me, had already set off early to Kahuzi-Biega National Park HQ to film the morning deployment of rangers and gorilla monitoring teams.  Eleven groups of gorillas are monitored daily in the 600 square kilometre highland sector of the park, despite the dangers of ‘negative forces’ (militias) they may encounter in the forest.  As yet it is too dangerous to have this level of conservation activity in the 10 times bigger lowland sector.  Rebel militias (which effectively means armed bandits) living in the forest need the same equipment as park guards, so attacks on guard posts are all too common.   The producer, Mick O’Donnell, and I intended to visit the Bukavu base of MONUC, the UN Mission in DRC, to check the security situation for Kalehe (where we wanted to film at a mine the next day) then planned to join the crew to film community conservation projects of the Pole Pole Foundation (PoPoF) around the park.

MONUC is a large, multi-national military operation, and to cut a long story short, we were directed here, there and everywhere by people from Poland, Niger, Pakistan and Egypt without finding the person with whom Mick had been corresponding.   By early afternoon we were out at the airport base talking to a friendly Indonesian officer (who had studied at Monash University in Melbourne so spoke Australian, and came from Sumatra where he had visited orangutans).  Bizarrely, we then found ourselves listening to a conversation in Bahasa as he called his Indonesian colleague in the area of the mine we hoped to film.   Fortunately, all was calm in that area and we got the go-ahead to drive there without the need of a UN escort.  For the first time ever in Africa, I found my self saying ‘terimah kasi’, rather than ‘asante sana’ as we thanked him for his time and called the crew to meet up.

Frustratingly, the crew by then had finished filming the PoPoF projects and were heading for Lwiro, where a small sanctuary for confiscated primates has been created in recent years.  Although sad to have missed the tree-planting and school children singing, I was delighted to visit Lwiro because it was two years since my last visit and I have both human and non-human friends there.  The Centre for Research in Natural Science in Lwiro is a fascinating place – a large and beautifully constructed complex that now sadly looks rather dilapidated.  It was built during the Belgian colonial period with labs and offices linked by covered walkways with arches, giving a cloister-like feel, as if it was a remote monastery for science.  In recent years CO-OPERA, a Spanish NGO, has formed a partnership with ICCN and PoPoF to co-manage the sanctuary.   ICCN is responsible for all wild animals in DRC and needed somewhere to keep animals confiscated from illegal traders or pet owners.   Lwiro had some old cages and was used as a convenient stop-gap until a proper sanctuary and rehabilitation centre can be built with the aim of eventual return to the wild for any animals fit enough.

The Oz crew were keen to interview Andrea Edwards, an Australian primate keeper on secondment to Lwiro from Melbourne Zoo. I was equally keen to catch up with Carmen Vidal, a Spanish vet I’d met on my last visit soon after she had arrived to take over running the sanctuary.   I was impressed by the new, bigger cages for the chimpanzees and monkeys (though suggested that weaving some visual barriers out of branches might help the inmates deal with the inevitable ‘cabin fever’ of being locked up together in such a small space).   Carmen had a surprise in store.   A short walk from the building where the new and old cages were, she showed me a new dormitory nearing completion to better house the growing number of chimpanzees – some of whom are now adult.   Excitedly, she explained the plan to enclose two hectares of forest and two hectares of grassy scrub with an electric fence.   “The chimpanzees will be out of their cages by the end of the year!” she said.

“And is all the funding in place?” I asked.

“Not quite,” she replied, “we are not yet approved by PASA, and some supporters will not send funds to sanctuaries that are not up to PASA standards, but of course without funds it is hard to make the improvements that are needed to achieve that standard!”

Quickly I grabbed my video camera and asked her to summarise, thinking I’d post her appeal on the Ape Alliance website (there being no confiscated gorillas at Lwiro;  sadly infant gorillas are illegally traded but when confiscated they are kept at a separate facility in the region under the care of specialist gorilla vets).  You can find out more about Lwiro at http://lwiro.blogspot.com/

While the film crew were finishing their interviews, John Kahekwa introduced me to Bertin Murhabale, a primate researcher and Jean Jaques Bagalwa, head of the Biology Department at CRSN,   I had collected a segment of gorilla tapeworm yesterday, and needed to fix it in Formalin.  They took me to see their labs where, on the bench, were piles of bags of gorilla and chimpanzee faecal samples.  Unfortunately, the primatology lab has no microscope or centrifuge, and Jean Jaques admitted that the whole research centre has only one old monocular microscope.  I invited them to give a YoG-Blog interview, which you’ll see once I find a way to upload it (but if you are reading this in a lab with old scientific equipment unused in a cupboard, do get in touch!).

Filming over, we rushed back to Bukavu (well, as fast as one can rush on atrocious roads in the dark), passing in and out of telephone network coverage, still waiting for that important ‘phone call that might add the first Head of State to the YoG Blog interviewees.  But as you might have guessed, the call never came;  maybe another opportunity will arise when I pass through Kinshasa….

Six young gorillas rescued from the illegal bush meat trade, have begun new independent lives on a lagoon island just outside Loango National Park in Gabon.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bhUuF15HfJ0

Staff at the Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) are celebrating after announcing the successful transfer of the six juvenile western lowland gorillas (a species deemed critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List (IUCN)) onto the safe island in the Fernan-Vaz Lagoon.

This is the first step in a reintroduction project that is hoped will allow them to return entirely to the wild and follows a three-year-long ‘rehab programme’ to prepare them for release.

Halfway through the Year of the Gorilla, the transfer marks the beginning of the gorillas’ independence. They have exchanged their human-built shelters for the palm-fringed forested islet where they can now live in relative safety from threats from poachers or other predators. The transfer was supervised by the Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project (FGVP) director Nick Bachand and his team of Gabonese keepers.

“We all felt a hint of sadness as the gorillas left the place where their journey started,” said Nick Bachand, a veterinarian. “But this was instantly replaced with a mountain of pride when we observed some of the gorillas starting to build their own nests to sleep outside overnight.”

Building self-made nests is an important indication, among others, of the young gorillas’ progress during this second phase of their rehabilitation.

Tragic pasts

 

Each of the six gorillas (three females, three males) varying in ages from two to seven, were orphaned by the illegal bush meat trade.

The oldest male, Gimenu, 7, was rescued in an emaciated state from a Gabonese zoo where he had spent three years in complete isolation.  He is accompanied by Sindila, 4, an abandoned male found by tourists on a river excursion, and Ivindo, also 4, flown in from the Ivindo National Park in 2005.  The youngest female, Wanga, 2, was left on the doorstep of a conservationist’s home in the southern half of Loango National Park while the other two Cessé and Eliwa, 3 and 2, were donated by another great-ape rescue centre in Gabon.

 

Gorilla orphanage

 

The gorillas have spent the past two and a half years undergoing daily forest rehabilitation accompanied by their keepers on Evengue Island, located north of Loango National Park.

A small team of local keepers will continue to monitor their progress from a base camp in the central zone of Orique island, where their new home is.

The Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project comprises a Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Programme. All its resident gorillas were rescued after the parents were killed illegally by hunters for bush meat. The purpose of the Sanctuary is to provide a safe home for gorillas that can never return to the wild as they lack the critical survival skills usually taught by their parents in the first six to eight years of their lives.

The younger gorillas are part of its Rehabilitation Programme, however, and have undergone its quarantine and socialisation stages. They now have the potential to be reintroduced into the wild although many challenges and uncertainties remain.

‘Gorilla rehab’ plays strategic role in survival of great apes

The IUCN has identified the use of reintroduction projects as part of a global strategy for the survival of the world’s endangered great apes. The Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA) works closely with the Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project and focuses wherever possible on reintroduction programmes.

“We have to find ways to restore value to Africa’s forests, and reintroduction places focus on the African wildlife in the African forests,” said Doug Cress, executive director of PASA.

He added: “It’s no good for any of us to aspire to having the world’s largest captive population of chimpanzees or gorillas – even if we are saving lives. That is not conservation and it is not sending messages that can be translated into environmental action.”

Return to the wild 

Thanks to a team of devoted veterinarians, dedicated keepers and the support of the international community, these gorillas’ return to the wild in the Gabonese equatorial forest is expected within two to three years.

In the meantime, the project is working hard to raise local and global awareness on issues facing the gorillas, to encourage research that emphasises the needs of the local people, and to integrate responsible tourism, as part of a national and international effort to save the gorilla from extinction in the wild.

The Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project in Gabon is a project of Société de Conservation et Développement (SCD) in affiliation with its main eco-tourism partner, Africa’s Eden. SCD has partnerships with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Max Planck Institute, the Gabonese Ministry of Forestry, and the Gabonese National Parks Agency (ANPN).

For the first time in Republic of Congo, a chimpanzee dealer was arrested and finally prosecuted. He was judged guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 1,100,000 CFA (1,679 Euro). This is the result of the Project PALF (Project to Apply the Fauna Law or Projet d’Appui à l’Application de la Loi Faunique), managed by The Aspinall Foundation and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). This project also benefits gorillas and you can donate for it!

Here you can watch PALF footage on Youtube.

The documentary “Petit Loango Wetland, Oil or Gorillas?” has been nominated for a 2009 ROSCAR Award at the Durban Wild Talk Africa Film Festival. The film is a finalist for the Best Natural History Production with a Limited Budget. It was produced by Year of the gorilla Partner GRASP and the RAMSAR Wetlands Convention in collaboration with Toon Films.

The movie will be screened at the festival on Wednesday, 22 April 2009 15 – 16.30, and a discussion with YoG Ambassador Ian Redmond will follow.

To view the movie preview, go to http://www.unep.org/grasp/ and look at the top on the left.
For more info on the festival, please go to https://www.wildtalkafrica.com/index.html