Update June 24, 2001    A Summer of Changes

 by Jane Dewar

It’s hard to believe we’re already almost halfway through the summer.  Steuart and I both took off for a trip to Cameroon last month.  It was his first and my second time to Limbe, where the second PASA (Pan African Sanctuary Alliance) was held.  We visited Yaoundé Zoo including their sanctuary at Mefou National Park, meeting six new baby gorillas in the process in a pre-conference tour.  Then we joined a lot of amazing people on the front-lines of the war against bushmeat and habitat destruction, and Steuart was elected to the PASA advisory board, in the hopes he and others can help sanctuaries all over Africa help each other curb the need for sanctuaries, which everyone agrees is merely a temporary solution in a much larger problem in global conservation.   Although it's still under construction, the PASA website has some preliminary information, and this website will be updated significantly over the coming months.

For me, seeing my old dear friends at the Limbe Wildlife Centre was wonderful and bittersweet.  Not seeing gorilla Evindi’s eyes watching my every move was difficult and his death in April was just one of many sad events.  The other six Limbe gorillas, however, were doing great and looking amazing.  I’ll do a separate report on them later on, but for now I can happily report all seemed to remember me, and each is growing in leaps and bounds!   I spent almost a month in Cameroon, while Steuart returned to GH to handle construction issues, and got to know the staff and animals at Limbe much better.  I even got to travel to southern Cameroon to visit the Campo-Ma’an project, where gorillas still live free of human interference.  While I didn’t see any gorillas, I did see their day nests and feeding sites, which reduced me to tears, thinking there are still a handful of truly free gorillas out there.  

June 11th, while I was still in Cameroon, GH hired another gorilla keeper –  Kelly (Daugherty) Maneyapanda, formerly head gorilla keeper at the Buffalo (NY) Zoo.  We’d interviewed several qualified people for the job, but Kelly's enthusiasm and positive attitude made her the leading candidate. Kelly and her boyfriend, Jeremy, are already settling into Fannin County, loving every minute of it. There’s still a lot to be done and Kelly will help Project Manager, Pete Halliday, get the stacks of paperwork in order in preparation for our first gorilla(s), which – while perhaps a bit optimistic – we’re still hoping could be here as early as this Fall.

In Buffalo, Kelly worked with one of my first gorilla “babies” – Kwizera, now a supermom like her own mother, Babs.  Kelly hadn’t seen many baby photos of Kwizera, who I still think of as a toddler running around Brookfield Zoo with her half-brother, Kwisha (now a huge silverback in Toledo), so we’ve had fun seeing old videos of Kwizera and photos of her as a mother herself in Buffalo.

Baby Kwizera in June 1988 with her mother, Babs, (Thanks to Tom and Jan Parkes).

Kwizera in June 1997, herself a mom to daughter Sidney, taken by  Ronald R. Geiger, courtesy of Kelly Daugherty. 

We’re painting, dry walling, installing plumbing fixtures and other rather “boring” but necessary construction tasks, awaiting windows, more steelwork, etc. Guests continue to stop by weekly and the summer promises to be one of many more changes to come.

(September 20,2003: Kelly Daugherty married and is now Kelly Maneyapanda).