Searching for Bonobo in Congo

Grey Parrots belong in Maniema.
There is a river called Kasuku (parrot in Swahili).
There is a Kasuku quarter in the provincial capital, Kindu.
Kasukus have power beyond other birds.

“In our Kusu dialect we call the parrots, KOSO, that means Talker. A Talker has power. People listen.”

Chief Pierre, who is now 65, told Salumu that there weren’t any parrot traffickers in Maniema Province in the 1970s and 80s.  Even with the arrival of Indian merchants, there was only a small local demand.  The merchants used parrots to guard the shop.  If a client arrived after the shopkeeper stepped behind for a cup of tea, the Parrot would announce loudly : “Client anafika. Patron atarudia sasa” “A client has come; the boss will return now. ”

During the 1970s Chief Pierre worked for the Kindu railroad.  He told Salumu that one Greek merchant, Mr Salvambas, would occasionally send parrots by railroad to Lubumbashi.  It was the only town that sometimes sent a request to Kindu coming from the Indians and other foreigners working in the mining sector.  The only direct way to send parrots from Kindu was by railroad.

Putting the parrots on the train for Lubumbashi was not simple. To have a spirit bird on the train was considered an invitation to disaster by the railway crew. But the money was good;  Parrots were bought in Maniema for 1 Zaire each (2 dollars at the time) and sold in Lubumbashi for 50 Zaires each. 
Commonly 20 were put on the train at one time.  And frequently half or more would be dead on arrival, but still the profit was good.

Salumu went to the Environment Coordination in Kindu to see what more he could learn about the history of parrot export from Maniema.  The interim coordinator confirmed that during Mobutu Sese Seko’s era, up through the early 1990s, there was little parrot commerce. The reason: strong, enforced national restrictions. Permits were needed to obtain and to keep parrots; the Coordination issued most permits for domestic not commercial use. 

International export of parrots out of Kinshasa, the environmental coordinator said, only started in the 90s, when Mobutu’s regime began to fall apart.

Import records from South Africa support this.   Through the 70s and 80s grey parrots came from West Africa; it was a different species, Psittacus timneh, not our Psittacus erithacus.   Then in 1992 and 1993 the numbers went up from Zaire (pre-war name of Congo).  They shot up over 1000 annually sent from Zaire to South Africa. ¹

During most of Mobutu’s era it was Congo’s own laws that put a clamp on the parrot trade, these laws were never reinstated after the long civil war that overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko and replaced him with Vieux Laurent Kabila.

HOW BIG IS AFRICAN GREY TRADE IN THIS CENTURY?

Here is an example from one importing country:  Singapore officially reported imports of 41,737 grey parrots between 2005 and 2014.  Half were wild caught and, of those, over 90% originated in DR Congo.²

The graph below takes records from importers in many countries to show the origin of  African Greys on the international market between 2007 to 2016.³

HOW BIG IS MANIEMA’S AFRICAN GREY TRADE?

There are many ways parrots leave Maniema for Kinshasa : boat to Kisangani, motorbike to Lodja, train to Kalemie  or directly through the airport in Kindu.

Records were kept at the Kisangani airport of the origin of parrots sent to Kinshasa. All Maniema parrots recorded came on boat or barge down the Congo River to Kisangani. These are only one part of Maniema’s parrot export.

International pressure through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) became more insistent: A ban on all trade in African grey parrots originating in DR Congo was put in place in 2016 and renewed in 2018.   In 2017 the African Grey parrot was put on CITES appendix I, basically forbidding all commercial trade of wild caught parrots ³.  Officially DRC seems to be following the CITES recommendations⁴: permit delivery for parrot trade ceased.  Salumu learned from Maniema’s Environment Coordination that the national environmental authority informed provincial offices that, as of 2017, that CITES forbade permits. Maniema’s Environmental Coordination no longer issues them.

What is the impact in Maniema?  Salumu spoke with one of the biggest traffickers of grey parrots in Maniema, Theo, who works for the company ‘Byart Birds’.  Theo has been operating since 2002.

Leon’s question was “how does the international ban on parrot trade affect your work.”  The answer:  “Not at all.  Byart tells me,  ‘Send them’ so I send them. Demand is high.”

Apparently, no permits, does not mean no trade.

Our big advantage in Maniema is that the province put its own regulations in place.  No other province has done so. Maniema understood that the CITES ban on parrot commerce from DR Congo needed matching, unambiguous in-country regulation.

In 2016 the governor also stopped captures altogether. The provincial decision was only pertinent until national legislation was put in place. This was expected to follow the CITES ban.  We are still waiting for national legislation; Maniema’s provincial ban on parrot trade is still in effect.

Despite this, many parrot operators are capturing and shipping out parrots from Maniema.  They are relying on payoffs, on clandestine transactions and multiple transport options.  They are relying on the fact that political turmoil, MaiMai activities, kidnappings and continuous crisis keep Maniema’s underpaid law-enforcement otherwise occupied.

We, at Congo’s conservation institute, ICCN, believe this can be changed.  Even now there are professionally dedicated wildlife agents scattered through Maniema’s countryside that confiscate parrots at the point of capture.  We are starting at the very bottom of the parrot trade chain.

Once parrots are confiscated, then what?  At the point of capture, the climber clips the parrots’ wings or “braids” flight feathers so none will escape.  It takes months, possibly a year for new feathers to grow in. 

Together with World Parrot Trust, and with advice from the Lwiro sanctuary in the east, we set up a site for rehabilitation and release 55 km north of Kindu at Dingi.

Here is a short video of progress.  At the time of writing more than 70 parrots have flown back into the wild, but more confiscated African Greys are coming in.

We will write more about African grey parrots on this blog and our progress to help them.

LEON SALUMU is the point person for ICCN Maniema.

¹ Mulliken, T.A.  1995. Trade Review: South Africa’s trade in African Grey Parrots. 43 pages. TRAFFIC East/Southern Africa.

²  Poole,C.M. & C.R.Shepherd. 2016.  Fauna and Flora International. Review Article. 7 pages.

³  UNODC. 2018. West and Central Africa Wildlife Crime Assessment. For CITES. COP18 Doc 34, Annex4.

⁴ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wide Fauna and Flora (CITES)  Notification to the Parties, 1 November 2018.  No 2018/081.  Concerning: Application of Article XIII in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Reissue of a recommendation to suspend trade in African grey parrots (Psittacus Erithacus).

Notes, photos and videos by Daniel Alempijevic

The far south of Lomami National Park is nutrient-poor, seasonally flooded grasslands dotted with tree islands, or bosquets. Gallery forests project into these prairies, creating a fluted but, abrupt end to the rainforest blanket covering most of the park and most of the Congo Basin.

The Luzaka prairie and surrounding forests are TL2 “hotspots” where patrols frequently encounter bonobos. David Fasbender spent a year in Luzaka studying the bonobo-rich forest with terrestrial camera traps. 

But what about the arboreal mammal community?  Which species occur in the forest fingers, or galleries? How many of these mammals leave the trees to cross prairies and colonize bosquets?

I am a PhD Candidate from Florida Atlantic University.  This was my third trip to the Lomami National Park.  Earlier I used multi-strata camera trap “columns” to study Inoko in the courbure sector. These columns increased our knowledge of mammal diversity in Lomami National Park (LNP), and revealed the preferred heights of different species in the canopy. Since these surveys, one Inoko was killed by a hunter in the Luanga gallery, on the east side of the Luzaka prairie.

Joined by a fellow FAU student, Charlene, and a TL2 team, I set 30 columns, 2 km apart, covering forest interior, forest edge, and bosquets to determine the occurrence not only of inoko but all mammal species in the southern LNP ecotone. 

There were some surprises working in Luzaka.  At some camps, it was the bee swarms. Honeybees craving salt would swarm us at camp, covering our skin, entering our clothes. They are not aggressive but, it is easy to pin the bees under your clothes, resulting in a sting. There were times when it was unbearable, and we would have to take refuge in our tents. Once, with bees in my ears and mouth, I had to submerge myself in a nearby stream.  I have been stung almost daily in Luzaka.  

At another camp, it was the termites. Charlene was their first victim, waking in the middle of the night with the sensation of insects crawling on her. They had chewed through her tent from below. We thought it was an unfortunate coincidence, and patched up the holes with some duct tape. A few nights later, I woke flat on the ground. The termites chewed through my tarp, then my tent, and finally my inflatable sleeping pad, and I was only three weeks into a 6-month trip. Over the next few visits to this camp, wherever I set up my tent, the termites would emerge. Over the next few months, other insects chewed through the rainfly and mesh from above. Brand new camping gear, all bug food.

Next, the rains began. Much of our 172 km² survey area quickly became inundated with water. Already difficult hikes over tussocky grasses and sedges, now included wading and the occasional swim. My “storm proof” tent, now covered in holes, offered little shelter from the storms. Flood surges destroyed two camera traps.

While at our farthest camp from the Lukunda field base, Martin, one of my assistants, woke me in the night whimpering from abdominal pain. Together with an ecoguard, they left camp on foot towards Lukunda, from where a TL2 motorbike took Martin to Kindu. The following night, I woke with fever. The next day, three more sick. We pushed for a few more days, setting a few more camera traps, this time targeting Inoko where the hunter reported killing one in the buffer zone years before. Finally, we could go no further, abandoned our goal of setting the three last sites, and started our two-day hike back to Lukunda. There we found that both the TL2 base leader and the ICCN head of the guard post had returned to Kindu ill. Some tested positive for malaria, none tested positive for COVID, we are now calling our collective illness “Lukundiasis”.

Through this work, we have accumulated some incredible videos. Not only did we record bonobos on the ground, but also in the canopy for the first time. The forest galleries are also home to a diverse ungulate community, and four monkeys.

The elusive Inoko, blue monkey, and black mangabey, are all present nearby in the Courbure sector, but  rare or absent in southern galleries. 

The most exciting finds for me have been black-bellied pangolins. Canopy camera traps provide the only confirmation that this exclusively arboreal species occurs in Lomami National Park. We recorded all three rainforest pangolin species during this survey. 

We have found that two monkeys and several other arboreal species are frequent visitors or residents of the bosquets. Three of them have been recorded crossing the prairies. We also recorded two of the prairies predators.

And perhaps the most incredible part of this work, is the breath-taking view and indescribable feeling of emerging through the rainforest canopy to see what creatures have passed over the same branch as me.

I want to thank the Primatology Lab at Florida Atlantic University and the FZS-TL2 project in DR Congo. Our particular thanks to ICCN for welcoming and facilitating this project. The critical funding that made it possible came from Margot Marsh Biodiversity Fund, Primate Conservation Inc. (PCI) and Primate Action Fund (PAF).