The Ruwenzori mountain chimpanzees are facing a lot of threats, because so many illegal activities are taking place in the area,and you should know that people face considerable challenges that are triggered by poverty,political instability so in order to satisfy their basic day to day needs, people don’t have other alternatives,most of the people do get their daily bread using hand hoe farming activities,burning agriculture, so imagine what can be their life standard, some people with bad will in order to make quick money they prefer to conduct illegals activities which are not so friendly to the environment,during my preliminary field survey in the area the following illegal activities were identified: -logging activities
-illegal and unplanned fire caused by burning agriculture
-Poaching activities both with guns and dogs,snare
-Deforestation -Timber harvesting During my visit in the area one of the local chief whom i found full involved in timber harvesting activities told me that, some months back he was an activist in the O.A.N association, then after he did not get any benefit from protecting chimpanzees in Mwenda that why in order to survive , he has been oblige to leave the association and to start logging and harvesting timber in the area,unfortunately different activities which are taking place in the area are not compatible with the conservation of fauna and Flora.
Please watch my video so that you can be aware of my needs for a laptop to communicate with you all via my blog!
The Chimpanzees conservation Project in The Ruwenzori mountains. The Ruwenzori mountain is called also the mountain of the moon,it is located in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, it marks the boundary between the Republic of Uganda and the Democratic Republic Of Congo, it is the third African highest mountain with 5119 meters of altitude, but the first highest mountain in Central Africa, its particularity is that it is located in the middle of the Equator, with ice on the top of its summits.
This mountain is home of chimpanzees and others primates such as white and black colobus monkeys, Olive Baboons, Blue monkeys. These primates are found between 1300 m of altitude and 2650 m of altitude. This mountain is one of the hot spots as far as biodiversity is concerned and one of the many tourist attractions in DRC. Protected areas in Africa have seen their buffer zone disappear because human activities are encroaching the boundary of the national park. But in the Ruwenzori area, still between the boundary of the national Park and the human settlement there is an existing buffer zone, a beautiful and pristine forest which is home of chimpanzees. During the dry season when there is not enough food available within the forest, these primates raid on crops from villagers farms,visit their breweries where they drink local brew made by local communities, raids on sugar canne farms, banana farms, creating them human wildlife conflicts in the area.
O.A.N. office in Mwenda So in the area, there is a village called Mwenda, its is a Protestant mission, local community people have organized themselves in an association called [ O.A.N], it is a French word,which stand for Organization Des Amis de la Nature, translating in English, it means,[Friends of Nature Organization..],and they have assigned themselves the following mission: -To ensure long term conservation of the Ruwenzori ecosystem and welfare of Ruwenzori chimpanzees Population - To reduce conflict between chimpanzees and human being or farmers around the wildlife communities reserve -To identify areas where human and wildlife are living in conflict -To stop land degradation of the Ruwenzori mountain
-To stop deforestation, logging activities, hunting, poaching activities from soldiers based in the area.
-To involve local communities living along side the mountainous area to protect the pristine mountainous forest and to maintain its biodiversity, genetic resources,natural process and cultural value in the mountain of the moon ecosystem, also to educate local people about the importance of conserving the chimpanzees, because on the long run the Ruwenzori ecosystem can be used in a sustainable way, and local communities are the ones who are going to benefit from different activities which will be taking place inside and around the mountains
In this picture I am in the middle with local villagers -As you know The O.A.N is just a pilot project, because chimpanzees are widely spread along the Ruwenzori mountain, they are so many, so our vision is to extend the conservation of the chimpanzees found in Ruwenzori, make a network of chimpanzees conservation association in all the villagers surrounding the Ruwenzori ecosystem on the Congolese side. Dear brothers conservationists, and friends of Nature, what I would like to tell you is that, we are starting this project on the grass route. Local communities are willing to conserve this Ruwenzori ecosystem, but we do not have any mean,even the office itself is in rough conditions. Rations for monitoring team in order to get reliable data from the field is not available, field equipments such as rain coats the color should blend with the environment, boats,G.P.S,Knife for field activities, tents,camera for field in order to be sending you the actual state of these great apes from the field and others evidences from the real field. Monitoring People get injured when conducting field activities, but we do not have medicine to treat them, so when back from the field if one of our fellow has been injured, we just send him at his home without any assistance, which is not so good, I do think also about the motivation of this monitoring team. They are 20 villagers who have volunteered to do the job and already they are present on the field , monitoring chimpanzees but if they are not motivated they will be discouraged soon. Monitoring activities in a mountainous area is not an easy task.
For myself Wambale I am the one who is providing technical advise to the association,the headquarter where I am based is 12 km from where I have implemented the pilot project, but i am telling you the true, even to reach Mwenda is a big challenges for me. We should know and note that wildlife exist in limited quantity and are exhaustible, the ability to maintain them depend in great measure on how they are managed, so I hope that this message will give you a general idea of what is going on in the Ruwenzori Mountain on the Congolese side, under control of the The Northern sector of the Virunga National Park/Mutsora station. I would like to thank Sherri S. for her kind donation. My first one!!!!
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