Gorillas return to Cameroon
2005-07-13 15:31
Pretoria - Four gorillas are set to leave Pretoria Zoo this week and return home after local scientists finally learnt where they originated from.
According to the international zoo community's 2005 International Gorilla Studbook, the animals were captured in the Cameroon.
In 2002 the four Western Lowland gorillas were illegally exported out of Nigeria, via South Africa, to the Taiping Zoo in Malaysia.
The Malaysian government sent them back to South Africa and they arrived in April 2004 and were housed at Pretoria Zoo.
Following a recent broadcast of documentary television programme Carte Blanche, which aired an insert about the gorillas, 65% of voters in an online poll indicated that they believed the gorillas should be sent to the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon.
Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), Jason Bell-Leask, said that this was the first time that the gorillas' heritage had been beyond dispute.
"Until now the South African government and Pretoria Zoo have persistently identified the need for DNA testing to prove the origins of the gorillas," he said.
But the release of the studbook meant DNA testing was no longer necessary, he said.
Originally, Ifaw and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (Pasa) went on record saying that as a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (Cites), South Africa was acting in bad faith by failing to uphold Cites guidelines that illegally confiscated animals should be returned to their country of origin.
Gorillas are listed as an endangered species on Cites' Appendix I list.
The gorillas will be integrated into the resident population at the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon, once they have completed a quarantine period.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, there were 94 000 Western Lowland gorillas in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Angola, but recent surveys indicate a decline of up to 56 percent across their range, due to poaching and disease.
In areas hard hit by the Ebola virus, over 90% of great apes have been killed.