Sawdust, Patience and Perseverance

by Jane Dewar, 14Apr2002

While a lot of progress is taking place this year, it still never seems to be enough to show or talk about for these updates.  We’re being asked daily when we’re getting our first gorilla resident and the answer continues to be “When we’re ready!”  Upgrading our facilities to meet strict AZA guidelines, we’ve had to remodel our existing maintenance building and build a new maintenance building in another location.  Big yawn … lots of sawdust, mud and construction debris for a few weeks and finally a building or two to show for it …(Photo left is a side view of the new maintenance building).

The next big excitement came when Elmer arrived.   Who or what is Elmer you ask?  A custom-made steel gantry* to support a GE 600mA x-ray machine in the vet clinic, without which we couldn’t complete building out the rest of the walls and rooms.  Then blockwork began in the Either-Or Building, framing in the recovery cages, squeeze cage and the necropsy room, with a custom freezer for storing bodies of deceased animals.  I had originally made a rule that no gorillas could die at GH.  I thought it was a great rule, but it was pointed out to me that this wasn’t my call to make, so reluctantly I agreed the upgrade  of the vet facilities would have to include a separate area for necropsies.  When we’re finished, the GH facilities will be more complete than a lot of zoos!

*My humor is often misunderstood, if not missed altogether … Elmer Gantry is the name of a movie …

Since the original maintenance building was next to our smaller original vet building, we decided to convert that to make room for the additional facilities we would need to meet AZA standards.  The original vet building was large enough to convert to include a surgery theatre, surgeon’s scrub, vet office, patient prep and storage/pharmacy area, but we still needed room for recovery and necropsy.  So these two areas were added to the old maintenance building, which I now call the Either-Or Building, since once a gorilla has had surgery, he/she will be moved there and EITHER they’ll recover OR they will have to be prepared for a necropsy. The blockwork is complete for the two recovery cages and squeeze cage, and the steelwork is in fabrication (photo left).

Steuart maintains a list of prioritized items in MS Project showing all the pending tasks which need to be done before we’re ready for inspection by the DNR and zoo world.  The list includes about 180 items, some major (completing electrical and plumbing work in Silverback Villa and the vet facilities) and some minor (sealing the habitat and finish painting the cages as part of our camouflage efforts needed due to the pine tree loss).  Many items are contingent upon several others being done first or simultaneously, some by our own staff, and some by other contractors, etc, so it’s a mind-boggling challenge, complicated by weather and other routine construction delays.  If it’s not directly related to getting a gorilla here, it’s on a lower priority list (like painting the new maintenance building!) … But since there’s so much to do around here, it’s often a challenge to keep people focused on our target, of being ready for a gorilla before the year’s end!!

Candidates for GH have been identified, but since we haven’t completed construction, we still don’t have any official word that gorillas will come to GH, once we’re ready.  Still, our faith remains strong and we know the inspectors and decision-makers in the zoo world will be blown away by the standards we’ve set.

Meanwhile, a new orphaned gorilla from the horrific bushmeat trade has found a new home at the Limbe Wildlife Centre.  His name is Batek and after completing quarantine, he will join the other gorillas at Limbe, which continues to do amazing work on limited funds.  Someone said to me,"Why should we support the LWC when the Dewars are supporting it!" making me think there's clearly the misconception out there that we have more money than sense, which is NOT the case.  Steuart and I give away between 70% and  90% of our income, not only to the GH Project but to various in situ conservation projects, saving individual animals as well as habitats.  We're not the gazillionaires we'd like to be, and there's still a lot of projects we hope others will join us in supporting. These include the LWC and Tacugama, two wonderful African sanctuaries among many others in the Pan Africa Sanctuary Alliance (PASA).