Conservationists working in Cameroon's Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary have collected the first camera trap video footage of the Cross River gorilla.

The extremely rare recording was made by a camera triggered by motion sensors.

You can see the silverback male gorilla running through the group, displaying chest beating. Researchers of WCS suggest he may have been aware of the camera.

Cross River gorillas are very rare and elusive. The shy animals usually flee when they see humans, as they have been heavily hunted.

With fewer than 250 individuals remaining, Cross River gorillas are the world's rarest gorilla and threatened by extinction.

Environmental clubs of schools in Mak-Betchou and the Tofala areas made their mark in the celebrations of February 11, 2012 activities which had as theme 'Youths and participation in Major accomplishment for an emerging Cameroon'.

As part of the programme, the different clubs marched with placards and banners carrying varied environmental messages like 'Conserve our forests by reducing deforestation', 'Let's joins hands to conserve gorillas and chimpanzees', 'Fight climate change by planting trees' amongst others. Other clubs marched with green cards for the environment and drawings of some wildlife species they had done during their club activities.

The major highlight of this celebration was a drama acted in pidgin and English by the children of GHS Ngoh.This drama highlighted the resistance in some villages to stop hunting protected species and the consequences that befall them when they remain adamant to advice given by environmental specialists and conservationists.

The activities drew the attention of many who hitherto had no interest and information about the conservation status of wildlife species such as gorillas, elephants and chimpanzees found in their forests. Seeing children act out what happens in the environment was touching and confirms the fact that conservation education in schools is important in disseminating information and equally in training the next generation of conservation enthusiasts.

The activities were applauded by the administrative authorities in their speeches.

Source: ERuDef Newsletter - February 2012    

By Atem Barry and Mahah Vladimire

Conservationists working in Central Africa to save the world's rarest gorilla have good news: the Cross River gorilla has more suitable habitat than previously thought, including vital corridors that, if protected, can help the great apes move between sites in search of mates, according to the North Carolina Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups.

The newly published habitat analysis, which used a combination of satellite imagery and on-the-ground survey work, will help guide future management decisions for Cross River gorillas living in the mountainous border region between Nigeria and Cameroon.

The study appears in the online edition of the journal Oryx. The authors include: Richard A. Bergl of the North Carolina Zoo; Ymke Warren (deceased), Aaron Nicholas, Andrew Dunn, Inaoyom Imong, and Jacqueline L. Sunderland-Groves of the Wildlife Conservation Society; and John F. Oates of Hunter College, CUNY.

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Efforts to save the Cross River gorilla, Africa's most endangered ape, received renewed hope after the United Nations (UN) recently approved $4 million to help Nigeria further promote conservation and sustainable forest management.

Environmentalists welcomed the news, which will help fund the country's National Programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, but warned that cooperation and education between all stakeholders, particularly local players, is key to preserving the species.

"Gorillas and chimps are protected by national and international law, but the reality is that that doesn't actually happen ... you have to have local buy-in," said CIFOR Associate Jacqueline Sunderland-Groves, co-author of Remote Sensing Analysis Reveals Habitat, Dispersal Corridors and Expanded Distribution for the Critically Endangered Cross River gorilla Gorilla gorilla diehli.

Cross River gorillas live exclusively along the remote and mountainous Nigeria-Cameroon border, but their numbers are so few that they were once thought to be extinct in Nigeria. Illegal poaching for bushmeat and loss of habitat has left only around 300 individuals in the world, making forest conservation vital to their survival. Primates are particularly vulnerable to deforestation and hunting, given their large body size and slow reproductive rate.

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A gorilla species that's been called Africa's most-endangered primate has found an advocate in a League City girl.

Berit Doolittle, 11, learned about the Cross River Gorilla from her mother Daniette Hunter, who home-schools her in League City. Wildlife advocates say this particular species inhabits just a small region along the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, and its numbers may be below 300.

"She saw there were only 300 left, and she said, 'What are we going to do?'" Hunter says. Between February and early May, Berit surprised her mother by zealously firing up a fund-raising campaign, going door-to-door in her neighborhood, reaching out-of-town families, and recruiting a third-grade class at Bay Area Charter School to help.

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A now critically endangered group of gorillas had split off into its own subspecies about 17,800 years ago, say researchers, who concluded that the evolution of the animal, the Cross River gorilla, was shaped by ancient climate change and, more recently, humans.

Some 1.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene Epoch, a common population of gorillas diverged into two species, western and eastern gorillas. Although the two species now live far from one another, they still look and behave quite similarly.

Based on their genetic work, Olaf Thalmann and Linda Vigilant of the University of Turku in Finland determine that the western species split into the Cross River and western lowland gorilla subspecies about 17,800 years ago. However, they found that some interbreeding continued until 420 years ago. Then, a century later, the number of Cross River gorillas plummeted sixtyfold.

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A Cameroonian environmentalist group is lobbying for the establishment of a new national park at Cross River on the Nigerian border to protect a little known sub-species of gorillas only living there.

The Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) is the least known critically endangered sub-species of gorillas, living in the forest of both sides of the Cameroon-Nigeria boarder in numbers of 250 individuals.

Now, the Cameroonian conservation and wildlife protection group ERUDEF is hoping the little exploited habitat of the gorilla sub-species may be set aside as a national park.

The Fossimondi region close to Cross River is a poorly explored area with large biodiversity, the group holds, saying it urgently needs protection to prevent from further encroachment. Here, the fauna of West and Central tropical Africa intermixes, making it a unique site because of many endemic species, an ERUDEF expedition had shown.

The group has already launched a "bio-monitoring" project of great apes in the little mapped Bechati-Fossimondi-Besali forest area, including the endemic gorillas and forest chimpanzees. The project has already revealed a unique behaviour of the local chimpanzees, which seemed to have copied the gorillas' habits of ground nesting.

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