Searching for Bonobo in Congo

Field update from John Hart and Maurice Emetshu

Elephants with muddy knees amble by night around a clearing in the northern TL2 forest.

This year, for the first time, we used camera traps in the TL2 forests to learn about animals that, previously, we knew only by the signs they left behind — their tracks, their dung…

In late March Maurice, our senior field leader, took eight cameras and a supply of rechargeable batteries to our northern base camp, Obenge. He experimented with different ways of hiding, attaching and aiming the cameras. He is thrilled – and so are we!

John and Pablo watch as Maurice downloads camera trap photos. The camera is visible on the treelet behind them.

At a small forest opening:

Maurice used the small mineral lick called Musubuku, hoping to find out how often different animals visited. During the day we never see animals; their tracks leave only an imprecise record of their nocturnal visits. Maurice set cameras with an infrared light beam as a detector. The infrared flash does not emit visible light, but captures the image in the dark of night without being detected by most animals.

A young adult male bongo visited Musubuku every few nights.

A group of four buffalo were also regular repeat visitors.

The elephants, whose photo is above, visited the clearling for a few successive nights and then were gone.

At Losekola, one of our research sites:

Maurice fixed the cameras along our research paths, or transects, at Losekola where we wondered if they could help us determine the prevalence of less visible animals. In the forest, animals can be hard to detect, either because they are nocturnal or just because they are very discrete. The cameras recorded twelve species so far, including the following:

A bonobo with his back to the camera at Losekola. Many of the photos, like this one, were taken with infrared NOT because it was night, but because of low sub-canopy light levels.

Six red river hogs moving in a tight sounder or group along a path.

In some pictures the animal that triggered the shot is less obvious:

The diminutive four-toed elephant shrew is in the lower right corner.

Up close, a very active creature of the forest floor.

Field worker, Pablo, who is also in the photo above, was lucky to catch the same species on his hand-held camera:

Petrodromus tetradactylus up close.

Captured as the sun streamed through the canopy, this camera trap photo of a Blue Duiker is in the full color of visible light.

Our presence has kept most hunters from using the Losekola forest, but our cameras “captured” one poacher, Nova. The village had agreed to protect our studysite, so the chief of Obenge confiscated Nova’s unregistered shotgun after Maurice showed the photo below.

Nova (above) was caught “red-handed” hunting in the Losekola study area. This shows that camera traps,  developed from surveillance cameras such as those in stores and banks, can still be used for that original purpose in the TL2 forests.

At our base camp:

And it goes both ways: people (like Nova above) stealing from the forest and the forest (in this case, a leopard) stealing from people.

There was a leopard hanging around near the village of Obenge, stealing chickens and goats. Maurice wondered if he could capture it on a camera trap– and he did – “red handed” or “red jawed” with a chicken in his teeth.

The leopard prowls along the edge of our project compound in Obenge; with a feathery snack  already nabbed.