Why I do what I do

This article popped up for me recently and I'd thought I'd share it here as well. This is why I do what I do and why places like rescue and rehab centres and sanctuaries (like the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre where I currently work) exist. The baboon in this picture is the same species of baboons that we have here in Malawi and the same as those that I released earlier this year. The photograph here absolutely breaks my heart and enrages me at the same time.

You can read the article here, although I've reposted it below, written by Solon Kelleher for The Dodo

https://www.thedodo.com/wild-animal-trade-1341144837.html#

Every day, animals are bought and sold as easily as a cup of coffee or a pair of jeans. This is the face of one of those animals, in a powerful photo.

Wildlife photographer Jabruson was traveling to Kenya to photograph elephant poaching. While passing through a village, he noticed something unbelievable and demanded his driver stop the car.

Jabruson, who was born in Kenya, captured the fear and desperation of a yellow baboon who was caught by farmers from a nearby village.

I saw a group of children with a tethered yellow baboon," Jabruson said in a statement through Por El Planeta's 2015 photo contest. "It had been caught when its troop raided local crops – the result of habitat loss."

Once he snapped a few images, the children realized the monkey had piqued the photographer's interest. The photograph above was taken as the children offered the roped baboon for sale.
Jabruson was faced with a difficult decision: purchase the monkey and transport him to a rehabilitation facility or leave him in the hands of the children. He explains:

As a visitor I could not and would not pay for the baboon. To do this would only stimulate the capture of wild animals for tourists and visitors. I couldn't confiscate the animal from these people – this being completely outside of my jurisdiction. Besides, indigenous people believe very strongly that they have every right to be doing what they're doing and don't need a foreigner telling them what to do when it's their children that go hungry at night because a wild animal has just destroyed that season's crops.

The photographer chose to take the image " to highlight yet another human-wildlife conflict issue so common in Central Africa" and left the monkey behind.

After he left the village Jabruson followed up with local authorities who "considered the matter none of my business." He wrote, "as a consequence I was never was able to establish what eventually happened to the young baboon."

This monkey is only one of the innumerable commodified animals worldwide.

Both alive and dead, animals can be worth a pretty penny to humans. The illegal trade of wildlife and natural resources is estimated to be worth about $213 billion dollars, according to a 2014 United Nations and Interpol report.

Unfortunately, as this photo shows, it's the animals who pay the price.

July in Malawi

Volunteers

I’m sorry for not writing in a while. Although, it always seems like I write that. At the same time, it seems that I have lots to tell you about and nothing much new at all. The past couple of months have been keeping my busy. My project has finally been advertised to take on volunteer field assistants and I’ve had at least one, sometimes two, steadily for the past 6 weeks. And after a few weeks of working solo, it has been nice to have some company in the field. I also really enjoy teaching youngsters (youngsters? How old have I become recently?!) all about fieldwork and baboons! They’re just about the only things I truly enjoy and can talk about with any authority now! It also cracks me up that I am finally in such a role-model-like position that I can actually impart any knowledge and, dare I say, wisdom? to anyone. The volunteers I’ve had had been volunteering at the Wildlife Centre before they came up, most of them for a few months. The first couple must’ve had a good time because they went back to the Centre with rave reviews and more volunteers signed up immediately. I take them out to the field with me every day and teach them how to use radio telemetry tracking, field smarts, how to identify the baboons, baboon behaviors, the data collection techniques we use, and anything else that might come up during the day.

John

On two of my volunteers’ first day, I found my troop, but my adult male, John, was not with them. John was always a good guy, albeit a little laidback for a dominant baboon. He put up no fight when Roman, my wild adult male, came to join the troop a few months ago. He was a big slow guy just merrily going through life. That afternoon I went to find John’s radio telemetry signal from his collar. I picked it up a few kilometers away from where the rest of the troop was, and immediately had a bad feeling. After following his signal for almost 2 more kilometers through the bush, we finally became very close, but did not see a baboon. My assistants and I spread out and started combing the area. My volunteer found John’s collar. After inspecting the area, I deduced that he was probably killed by a leopard. There was his collar, patches of hair on the ground, and…his skull. All this was underneath a large tree, with leopard claw marks on the trunk, and a patch of hair stuck about 10 meters up. Surely the work of a leopard. While it is unusual for leopards to go after adult male baboons, adult male baboons have very large canine teeth and are quite strong, John was always a slow baboon and maybe he lagged behind or just couldn’t get away as quickly as the others. I was very sad about losing John. It’s like losing a friend. I spend more time with these baboons than I do any human being. I felt bad that I couldn’t have done more for him, but at the same time, this is wildlife and the bush. It’s better to die in the bush naturally than to live a long life in captivity. And John got a great six months out in the wild proudly leading his troop.

Wildlife Visits

We had some exciting wildlife encounters around camp lately. One night, two leopards could be heard on either side of camp. A little bit later, in fact five minutes after I had gone outside of my tent to pee, as I was climbing back into bed, a leopard growled outside my tent! About 6 feet from my bed. I could feel it in my bones. He might as well have been INSIDE my tent. It was terrifying and so so cool. Dan and I set up some camera traps on the road behind my tent and the first night we caught a gorgeous female leopard walking to and from camp. A few nights later we got another leopard, this time a very large handsome male. Leopards are amazing and it’s very cool to have them so close to where I live. Although, it makes walking back to my tent at night a little wearisome.

I’ve also heard hyenas a bit more recently. They can usually be heard whooping a ways away, but one night this week, they were very close to camp, and whooping and yelping and giggling. It was incredible to hear their multitude of excited sounds so close to camp. They were clearly enjoying a kill nearby. So nearby in fact that before the hyenas made their racket, only a couple of minutes after I had gotten into bed, I heard a puku, a small impala-like antelope that live here, run behind my tent, and then run back the other way in front of the tents. I’m sure a leopard was chasing him, and was successful not far off. Going to sleep to the sounds of a leopard growling and hyenas yelping was awesome.

A couple of months ago, a young puku was seen milling around our tents. He appeared to be orphaned (maybe his mother was the victim of one of these leopards?). He continued and continues to hang around our camp. I’ve named him Petey. He’s usually seen every day lounging in the grass in the middle of camp. He has quickly become used to both Dan and myself, and no longer runs away from us. He’s grown considerably over the past couple of months. Each time I hear a leopard I fear for his safety, but somehow he manages to escape their clutches and will show up at camp the next afternoon. I’ve come to really like having Petey around camp.

Last weekend, about 25 elephants, about half the total population of elephants in Kasungu NP, came waltzing through camp. They spent the entire Sunday and more than half of Monday walking by the kitchen and bathrooms, drinking from the dam, swimming in the water, and rolling in the mud. Usually a few ellies come by at a time and for only a few hours at a time. So this was pretty incredible. A few of my friends from the Centre were up visiting and we just spend hours and hours watching and photographing (I must’ve taken hundreds of photos) the ellies, sometimes from as close as a few feet away.

The increase in wildlife visits is most likely due to the onset of the dry season. Water is quickly disappearing around the park, and the animals more frequently visit the dam where my camp sits for the plentiful water. And while some of you who have visited various other African national parks might not think that a few leopards or elephants is terribly exciting, I assure you that out here in Kasungu, wildlife is scarce. I saw a couple of sable and a few zebra a couple of weeks ago, which are both incredibly rare in these parts. Imagine, zebra being a rare sighting. So, as the dry season continues in full swing, I look forward to these wildlife sightings!

Friends come to visit

Last weekend, my friends Rob, Kat, and Olivia came up to Kasungu. Olivia, who had been working here since I came last December, is leaving Malawi soon so we wanted one last fun weekend all of us together. It’s nice to have good friends come visit; it gives a nice break to the monotony and solitude out here in the bush. We mostly watched the elephants the whole weekend. We also watched a bootleg copy of Jurassic World, which was great fun. We went up to Black Rock for the excellent view of the park to the horizon in every direction. Overall, it was a very fun and restorative weekend.

July pics

I know I haven't written here in a while; to be honest, not much has been happening out here. But until I have some decent time to sit and write a good blog for ya'll, here are some recent photos for you to enjoy. 

Making nsima, the local maize-flour food

Petey, an orphaned Puku who hangs around our camp. 

Me at work! 

Meet Roman

Well, I’m back now in Lilongwe for a couple of weeks (was supposed to be a couple of days) because my car needs fixing…again. But at least it gives me a good chance to give a little Kasungu / Release update.

A few weeks ago my troop encountered a neighboring wild troop of baboons. Actually they came across each other three times in one day. It was all very exciting and stressful. But at the end of the third encountered, we saw a male from the other troop run over to ours, very much in the style of Red Rover, Red Rover. This new guy seemed to follow my baboons for the rest of the day without incident, so we decided just to watch and see what would happen. It is usual for sub-adult and adult males to leave their natal troops and immigrate into new ones. This helps, of course, with preserving the species’ genetic diversity. However, unless you do long-term field work, it’s not a usual occurrence to see. It’s one of the few typical baboon things that I hadn’t yet been privy to witness! So needless to say, I was very excited by the whole thing. 

Over the next few days, we all watched tentatively to see how this new male would mesh with the group. And thankfully, everything seemed to go smoothly. There were a few bouts of chasing between him and my own resident sub-adult male and adult male, but no real aggression or fighting or injuries. Watching the whole immigration process was very interesting. The new guy spent a few days towards the outskirts of the troop, quietly following along. After a few days, my own troop began following him, taking his lead because he clearly knows the area and the bush better than they do. My adult male, John, didn’t seem to care at all, and seemed happy to hand the reigns over to someone more capable. The rest of the troop also didn’t seem to mind him joining. Bruiser, my sub-adult, who had been the leader thus far, seemed a bit peeved, but still followed the new guy along with the rest of the troop. Hopefully Bruiser continues to stick around and doesn’t get itchy fit like sub-adult males tend to and go off to find another troop, something which is definitely likely. But I like Bruiser and he is a key member of my small troop so I was happy to see that he and the new guy were getting along.

Roman

 

Once it was clear that this new male was going to stay with us, I decided to name him Roman. I always try and incorporate my rather odd undergrad Classics major into my primatological life, and the best way is through awesome names. In the past I’ve named some baboons Aeneas, Agamemnon, Athena, etc. So this one is called Roman. It’s also a slight pun, because he’s a roamin’ male, get it? Roman is a sub-adult, soon to be an adult. He’s slightly larger than Bruiser and slightly smaller than John, but he is big and muscular and healthy. He’s got a skinny dark face with kind eyes and long ginger-y hair. He’s very orange compared to my grey-er baboons. 

Roman (back) is much more orange than Bruiser (front)

I’m excited to see how Roman continues to integrate into the troop and in turn how the troop responds to him. I’m also excited that this new bush-wise male will increase the bush-savviness of my own release troop!

And here are some more recent photos for you to enjoy!

A Rough Day

This past week was…. Intense. Last week, as we were coming back from our weekly shopping trip to town, we got a call from wildlife vet Dr. Amanda Salb. (By the way, the “we” I usually refer to is me and Daniel Grove. Dan is the camp manager of the research camp here in Kasungu. He’s an Englishman that used to work in South Africa at the Vervet Monkey Foundation (VMF), only a couple hours from CARE. We actually have a number of friends in common that we’ve met along our various travels and journeys. He is in charge of my budget, and shopping for food and supplies, organizing scouts for me, and acts as my field assistant when I need him. Basically, he’s the only other person I live with way out here.)

Anyways, Amanda works for WERU, the Wildlife Emergency Response Unit, the only wildlife veterinary service available in the whole of Malawi. She basically redefines “badass”. For example, she worked with the Centre and the carnivore research team to dart and collar urban hyenas in Lilongwe a few months ago to be translocated. She had one in the back of her Land Rover on the way to the Centre when it woke up slightly from its sedation. She basically had the hyena in a headlock as it bit her arm, as her boyfriend/colleague pulled the car up onto the curb and jumped in the back with more sedation. Pretty badass. She also helped with darting our male baboon, Big Foot, for the release.

So, we got a call from Amanda that she was on her way to Kasungu. There was an elephant that was shot through the ear and into her shoulder a few weeks ago by a poacher. This happened not too far from the lodge and the camp where I live. We all know about the problem of poaching and we’ve all seen pictures or news articles or blurbs on Facebook about the dwindling elephant and rhino populations, but to have it be a reality in my backyard was a new thing.

They had been following this elephant almost every day since then to track her progress. At times she seemed fine, slightly limping, but then gradually got worse, becoming more and more lame. I’d often come across her on or near the road up to my release site. Amanda had come out a couple of times to assess her situation, but there was ultimately nothing she could do, especially without an x-ray of the damage to her shoulder.

The week before blocking my route home from the field. You can see her right front leg limping a bit.

Unfortunately, on Saturday, the ellie, named Kalimba, which is a Chichewa word for strength or bravery or something similar, couldn’t get up. We joined Amanda at the ellie while she administered antibiotics and fluids. We even tried to push her up onto her feet, or at least onto her chest so she wasn’t just lying on her side on the ground. I was literally kneeling in a pile of elephant poop while shoving with all my might to try and get her to budge. Unfortunately, elephants are heavy and she refused to get up. We all soon realized that she was too far-gone and there was nothing that we could do for her. We left her for the night, with a couple of scouts to keep the hyenas away, knowing that she would probably die soon.

And she did. We arrived early the next morning to find that she had died sometime around 4:30 in the morning. Amanda performed a localized necropsy on her leg and shoulder to assess the damage and what had caused her to decline so quickly and ultimately die. It turned out that she was shot in the shoulder, which had basically shattered it. Pieces of bone had come off and were dying and rotting away. It’s no wonder she could hardly put weight on that leg. It was incredibly interesting to watch the whole process of investigating and digging out the bullet. But it was also incredibly gruesome. I’ve seen a fair amount of necropsies and injuries, mostly baboon, but this was an elephant. Amanda dug the bullet out and the scouts said it was homemade from some melted old batteries. Pretty fucked up. She was also just shot so unnecessarily, so sloppily. These poachers just shoot without thinking or without knowledge. They don’t know how to properly kill animals, and instead just wound them and inflict nothing but suffering.

The bullet 

The worst part came at the end when the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) staff had to take her tusks. They have to take them and log them as evidence of the poaching and to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands anyways. To save you from hearing about too much gruesome-ness, just trust me when I say it was one of the most surreal and upsetting things I’ve ever seen first-hand.

The whole ordeal was pretty surreal and at the time I thought it was just a really interesting experience. I mean, how many people get to see that? After I spent the rest of the day in the bush looking for my baboons, it really started to hit me about how fucked up and upsetting it really all ways. Sorry for the language, but there’s really no other way to put it when talking about a dead elephant due to poaching. This week has been intense, upsetting, tiring, and taxing. Dan and I were talking just yesterday about how absolutely crazy that whole experience was, and about how upsetting it both made us later on, how it was a weird couple of days. Definitely something we will never forget and will always share between the small group of us.

I’ve added just a few photos. The rest I think are more than everyone really wants to see.

Jojo

Jojo is an adult female baboon from my troop. She was found a couple years ago being chained to a tree in someone’s backyard. Unfortunately, not an unusual story for baboons here in Africa. You can watch her rescue and the beginning of her rehabilitation story here:

 Jojo's Story

Jojo was the lowest-ranked baboon in the troop. She’s very sweet but often spent time by herself. When we put the baboons into their release enclosure for a few days prior to the release in order for them to slowly get acclimated to their new surroundings, Jojo unfortunately became the target of some aggression stemming from the stress of a new environment. Her injuries prevented her from being released and she was taken back to the Centre for some treatment and recuperation time. After a few weeks there, she seemed back to her old self and we traveled to Lilongwe to pick her up.

The troop was still hanging around the release enclosure area and using trees in the vicinity as their sleeping site, so it was an ideal time to reintroduce her to the troop. Luckily, everything went very smoothly. She spent a day and a half in the enclosure again, to allow the troop time to say hello and for her to again acclimate to her surroundings. Everyone greeted each other happily, which was a delight to see. There was lots of grunting and lipsmacks and grooming.

When we opened the enclosure she ran right out and up a nearby tree. She seemed a little apprehensive at first about where she was, just as the other baboons had on their first day. She quickly joined her friends and has been living her free life in the bush ever since! In the following few weeks, she has done remarkable well. She doesn’t pay us, the research team, any attention, she keeps up with the rest of the troop, and she eats plenty of the good natural foods around. She gets particularly excited when finding seed pods that grown near the ground. She is already gained weight and body condition and is looking as healthy as ever. 

Initially, we weren’t sure the whole process was going to work. Was the troop going to accept her again? Were they going to be aggressive towards her? Was she not going to want to join her troop again? Would she not be able to keep up with the others? But Jojo has absolutely excelled in all areas. It has been a joy to be able to give this kind baboon yet another chance at being free. To me, it even seems like that the rest of the baboons were waiting for her to return. As soon as she did they became more vocal throughout the day, and they began to explore their home range further. The very next day after Jojo's release the troop began to expand their foraging areas and started sleeping at different sleeping sites.

February in Kasungu

I’m sorry I haven’t written in so very long. There’s so much to catch up on now, I don’t know where to start!

The Release

The release got off to a rather rocky start. Immediately the baboons shot off in the opposite direction than we thought and than we anticipated. The next day we found them, but they had split into two groups, one of 9, with the two adult males, the one subadult male, a juvenile male, four adult females, and one infant, the other of 12 baboons, made up of two adult females and ten juvenile males and females. Both groups travelled enormous distances for baboons, around 20 km a day, but unfortunately in the wrong directions. We kept track of the two groups in hopes they would reunite, but the next day the group of 12 ran into a very large troop of wild baboons, about 70 individuals strong. I watched as the wild troop chased off my small group of 12 young baboons. The 12 scattered and basically that was the last we saw of them. We, then and now, searched the area far and wide for any sign of them. A week or so later, one of the juvenile males was spotted with another wild troop, looking happy and healthy. So that was great news!

Lately

Now my days are spent focusing on the 8 baboons I have, John, Bruiser, Chip, Wendy, Tosca, Bobbit, Jilly, and Brian. They are finally behaving like we anticipated and spending time around their release site. I am still provisioning the troop with some food to ease their transition into the wild. They spend their days in an absolutely beautiful area that is ripe with all sorts of natural foods. They eat grass and mushrooms and grasshoppers, and even some bird eggs. It is awesome to see them taking advantage of all that the bush has for them. It has been the height of the rainy season so everything is in full bloom, the grass is as tall as I am, and the clouds are always amazing. All the baboons are doing really well, eating lots and growing rapidly. They’re slowly expanding their range that they explore everyday. It’s tiring work though, I’m in the field when the baboons get up and leave when they go up in their trees to sleep (roughly 6am-6pm), but it’s all good fun and for the best cause ever!

Health

A few weeks ago I had a crazy health thing. No, not malaria again, thank goodness. I had a nasty bacterial infection just next to my knee. It was rather red and painful. I came back to Lilongwe to get it sorted out. Sorting it out turned out to be quite unpleasant. The doctor here had to slice my leg open a bit and squeeze a bunch of nasty stuff out of it, root around in my knee, and then leave it open so it could drain and heal. Sorry if that’s too much information, but it was really gross. I spent the next week hobbling around on crutches while the gaping hole in my knee slowly closed up. It was such a bummer to miss a week of work, but it was nice to be in Lilongwe again. Apparently the rainy season affects people in crazy ways! But good news is that the weeks since have all been fine!

Birthday

For the 6^th year in a row, I spent my birthday in a foreign country. My friend Kat from the centre came up to Kasungu to surprise me the weekend before and we had a nice little party with the just the few of us. It was unexpectedly very fun. The next day we all hung out and then climbed Black Rock, which is, well, a large rock. It overlooks the whole park; trees as far as you can see, which includes over to Zambia. We drank some beers as the sun set. Unfortunately, and at the same time fortunately, our car broke down a few days later and we had to return to Lilongwe to get it fixed. So I was able to spend my actual birthday here at the centre amongst friends and going out on the town. It was a great way to bring on 28!

Jojo

I’m writing this from Lilongwe now, where I’m preparing to bring Jojo back for re-release. She was part of the original troop, but sustained some injuries in the release enclosure and was taken back to the centre to recuperate. Now that she’s all better I’m going to bring her back up to Kasungu to rejoin the troop and get another chance at living in the wild. Very exciting!!!