2009 June | Tacugama

LIGHTNING STRIKES!

Category: Tacugama | Date: Jun 24 2009 | By: tacugama

It never rains but it pours… Now the rainy season has started to make a big impact – and not just with the water… yesterday afternoon a huge electrical storm passed over the sanctuary and we were hit by lightning. As storms are common in Sierra Leone’s rainy season all of our electric fencing that surrounds the enclosures is protected with lightening conductors but yesterday’s strike produced much more power than even they could dissipate.

As we rushed to check our monitoring equipment and the fences we discovered that the strike had caused significant damage to our installations. Much of yesterday was spent painstakingly tracking cabling and switches to see how bad the damage was.

Bala and Pastor checking for damage
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We’ve been incredibly lucky that none of our staff or chimps were hurt by the strike, though Willie and our new volunteer Tess, who were in the office at the time, received mild shocks. That’s about where the luck ends…

Tags: Chimpanzee, Sierra Leone, Tacugama

3 responses so far

Sad days at Tacugama

Category: Tacugama | Date: Jun 23 2009 | By: tacugama

Sorry we’ve not been blogging as much over the last couple of weeks - it’s been a tough time here at Tacugama recently.

We were catching up with ourselves after the month long intensive health check programme and putting all the paperwork in place in mid-May when one of the chimpanzees in Mama Lucy and Joke’s group, Mark, failed to come in from the forested enclosure as usual at the end of the day. Joke also failed to come in and was sitting at the top of one of the tall trees calling to the care staff. The rest of the group came into the dens but with Joke in the enclosure there was no way for us to go and look for Mark. Joke has grown into a strong and powerful male and we can take no risks. Joke finally sensed that we were trying to help and came into the dens but with the light failing, looking for Mark proved unsuccessful that evening. We were out again at first light the next morning and sadly found Mark dead, another likely victim of EMCV. It was a bitter moment as we had just completed all the vaccinations but it takes time for resistance to develop and for poor Mark it was too late. It was a sad end to an intensive and positive programme with great team work from all our staff, volunteers and the Max Planck team but demonstrated just how vitally the protection from EMCV is needed.

Tags: Chimpanzee, Max Planck, Sierra Leone, Stichting AAP, Tacugama

9 responses so far

Gun shots alarm the census team

Category: Census, Tacugama | Date: Jun 09 2009 | By: tacugama

Dr Terry Brncic reports back from her team’s most recent census visit to the Outamba Kilimi National Park (OKNP) in the north of Sierra Leone on behalf of Tacugama:

Outamba Kilimi National Park is currently the only national park in Sierra Leone. Located in the far north of Sierra Leone on the border with Guinea, it is divided into the larger Outamba section in the east and Kilimi section in the west of northern Bombali district. The terrain is relatively flat with low rolling hills and plateaus offering excellent views across the spectacular landscape.

Thin strips of darker riverine forest running through the woodland savanna, and some of the spectacular hills across OKNP
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