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Last week was a big moment for the briquette programme.  After months of development, we’ve just launched our briquette press workshop at the park headquarters in Rumangabo.  Until now, we were having the large wooden briquette presses built in Goma, which took quite a lot of time.

The “building” before (William from Soderu in the white shirt)

The new building after the restoration, with the new team working full steam ahead

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Amani has been succesfully moved to the DFGFI facilities and has been introduced to fellow orphan gorilla Kighoma and visually introduced to Mapendo.

The introduction has so far gone well and it was fascinating to see the reactions of the three different gorillas to each other. None had seen another of their species in a long time- in Mapendo’s case, more than 18 months since her rescue in January 2008.

As you can see from the video, Amani was very confident and happy to finally have a playmate!

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After a follow-up of the IDPE report on the killing of elephants in Virunga, this news report came out this morning on Agence France Press:

KINSHASA (AFP) — Dozens of animals have been killed by armed groups at Africa’s oldest national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the start of the year, park officials and environmental groups said Tuesday.

Chimpanzees, elephants, antelopes, birds and hippos have been slaughtered after Virunga National Park became the scene of intense fighting.

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Earlier this year I wrote about the lack of clean water in Bukima and how the population near the park was struggling with water, even going into the park just to find some to drink and cook with.

The month of June marks the beginning of a dry season that will last into August. We haven’t had any rain at all in over three weeks and already people are running out of water. The fews sources of water such as stagnant ponds and volcanic caves are drying up.

These pictures by Eddy tell the story better than I can:

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The rescued baby gorilla Amani is going to have a gorilla playmate soon. She has gone from strength to strength and has recovered well from her bullet wound. Veterinary tests on her and the male gorilla “Kighoma” being cared for by DFGFI have come up clear, so the decision has been made to put them together.

So later this week Amani is going to move in with Kighoma. It has been months since she was rescued at Goma airport and was probably in captivity for months before that, so it has been a long time since she has seen another gorilla.

It will be very interesting to see how they react to each other, but since they are about the same age and size, we hope that they will become playmates and good companions.

As always, we will tell you know how it goes right here on the blog. In the meantime, here are some pics I took of playful Amani this morning:

Amani putting weight on her injured leg

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Exactly one year ago I wrote on this blog about tourists who we being taken to see the mountain gorillas by the CNDP rebels who at the time controlled the Gorilla Sector of Virunga National Park.

One of our worries was that those tourists were not following the proper procedures, such as keeping 7 meters away from the gorillas. This is very important since we humans are so closely related to gorillas (less than 3% genetic difference) that we can easily pass diseases to them, especially respiratory diseases.

So when tourism re-opened last month, we consulted closely with the vets at MGVP to establish the best possible practice for visiting the mountain gorillas. They told us that in a ideal world, all Rangers and tourists would wear masks any time they were with the gorillas.

So that is exactly what we are doing. Rangers started putting on the masks to see if the gorillas would react, but they didn’t. The tourists have also been understanding and have not complained about having to wear the masks.

Two rangers wearing the masks

This hasn’t been done anywhere else and we are proud that we are pioneering new ways in which visitors can safely share unique moments with our cousins, the mountain gorillas.

To find out more about visiting the mountain gorilla of Congo, please send us an email at  tourism at gorilla.cd

Today our facebook cause reached 75,000 members with over $10,000 donated, giving us the rank of “Parade.” This makes us the 50th top cause in the Animals category.

We are trying to move up that ranking, so if you are not already a member of our cause, please click here, sign up, and invite all your facebook friends.

You will be able to discuss the events in Virunga with your facebook friends and set up a donations box on your own profile page.

This photo of a mountain gorilla in Virunga in 1989 was shared by a facebook
member Giorgio Lugli.

William and Samantha have just sent us this picture of their son, who they have named Alexandre.

Looks like we have a new recruit!

If we humans celebrate our birthdays, why not celebrate gorilla birthdays?

Yesterday was Kanyarwunka’s 4th birthday and on Friday it is Maheshe’s 6th birthday. Then on the 23rd of June Kwibesha turns 5 and on the 30th Kitagenda turns 7.

You can click on their names to find out more about these gorillas and to wish them a happy birthday!

Kwibesha

The best way to celebrate? Send Virunga National Park a donation or sponsor an area of forest habitat to make sure these gorillas will live to see many more birthdays.