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.

Shortly after we bade farewell to Ruud and Esther, who together with a Euro 1000 grant from Stichting AAP in Holland were able to improve the enclosures for the younger chimps while they also provided good support for the health checks.  Ann and Michel left a couple of days later and Ann is now working from the Max Planck Institute helping to follow up on EMCV and the vaccination programme.  (Michel has just joined the Lola ya Bonobo team for a few weeks to support the health checks on the bonobos there due for re-introduction).

Just as we were celebrating Willie’s award as a 2009 Disney Conservation Hero, we were struck by further sad news.  Cheetah, who had recovered amazingly well from her suspected EMCV attack in April, suddenly started to deteriorate rapidly suffering fever and breathing difficulties.  Despite full attention from Dr Rosa and the team, Cheetah sadly passed away leaving us all feeling very hollow.  Cheetah was one of the original eight chimps who founded the sanctuary and with her strong and determined character helped with our drive to keep Tacugama going through our difficult early days.

As you can imagine, it’s not always easy to communicate bad news so we’re sorry for our recent reduced contact, we hope you understand.  We’ll be back to bringing you our regular news over the coming days.

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