BUSHMEAT 3 : The History of Hunting in TL2
Category: Places, Threats, people, wildlife | Date: Feb 26 2008 | By: admin
Traditional hunting was not more gentle than hunting today. A large mammal, like an okapi, falling on spears sticking straight up in a pit, is not gentle.
These men are covering a pit dug along a narrow animal trail.
But traditional hunting does NOT empty the forest. Bushmeat hunting is different, it scours ever larger areas of forest. Traditional hunting was local: it happened in nearby forest that was just as much home as the village, and, in the past, was set in a vast matrix of virgin forest containing un-threatened animals.
Traditional weapons were arrows, perhaps poison tipped, and spears. The inner bark of the Kusa liana (Manniophyton fulvum) rolled into a narrow tensile line and knotted into a net used in communal hunts. Pits were dug deep into the forest floor, covered and camouflaged. Ingenious snare traps were made of flexible poles and lianas.
John (20 years ago) inspecting a Red River Hog killed with a spear.
All of these methods of hunting still exist but it is the new techniques and the new scale that empty the forest.
Snares made with wire or nylon line can wipe a forest clean of animals. When made with traditional fiber rope, snares rot in the rain, also they can not withstand the strength of a large struggling animal. Wire and nylon can.
A blue duiker caught in a nylon snare, ©Copyright_Reto Kuster
Where did the wire and nylon come from, when did they infiltrate the forest? During the colonial era the offal of advancing modern society penetrated the Congo. The wire filaments of truck tires abandoned behind the mission station were perfect for snaring small animals. And the winches on land-rovers, or the drags from logging rigs provided cable to untwist and re-form into a noose that could hold a forest pig or okapi.
These new traps were so efficient the forest around the village grew silent and the hunting radius had to move farther and farther from the village.
Occasionally a villager owned a 12 caliber rifle, often a home-assembled version, BUT truly long distance hunting for big game came with weapons of war.
This was no longer villagers hunting for subsistence or to sell meat for a little cash to buy the family a round of new clothes. No. This was military and ex-military seeking ivory to fill the coffers of military officers in large cities far away. Their weapons of war could destroy a herd of elephant.
Elephant family at the kind of forest opening (mineral lick) where they are frequently hunted. ©Copyright_Reto Kuster
The origin of these weapons is a bloody footnote in the long war that has ravaged Congo and that drags on in the Virungas. This part of the war never made international news. Along TL2’s southern savanna border war struck in 2001 when the Rwandan backed RCD-Goma streamed towards Kinshasa to attack the current president’s father, Laurent Kabila. National troops and local families fled into the forest; abandoned AK-47s made their way north, down the Lomami, and are now killing the remaining elephants along the TuTu River.
Weapons abandoned by troops as they fled into the forest
Also in 2001, taking a forest route, Tutsi-backed RCD chased the Hutu Interahamwe deep into the TL2 landscape. A well-armed Colonel Jado of the RCD, originally from south of Ubundu, fomented ancient racial strife between the Banyamituku and the Balengola. There was massacre and rape. A small aside perhaps, but five years later the Balengola could count among their losses the extermination of all their elephants.
Eventually we hope we can put this map in the sidebar, but until then, here it is inside the post to help orientation
The pursued Rwandan Interahamwe chose the most remote area in which to take refuge. For three years, 2001-2003, Obenge was their base. Although all Interahamwe had left, it is no surprise that Ashley arrived in Obenge last year to find mainly hunters from distant regions. Local inhabitants scattered from Obenge years earlier. Their forest was invaded, armed, and, even now, slowly losing its rarest animals.
The memories are raw. As Ashley went up the Lomami for the first time in July and August 2007, the sound of the motor on his dugout sent whole villages scattering into the forest. Only hours later people would filter back in ones and twos. Men first.
One of the men on Ashley’s team comforts two children left in a hunting camp as everyone else fled helter-skelter into the forest, convinced that Ashley’s team were military come to commit atrocities.
Strange how this recent history of TL2 is just as bloody and almost as obscure as the history of forest war more than a century earlier.
TL2 Training in the Ituri
Category: About the project, Places, Threats, people | Date: Feb 20 2008 | By: admin
Ashley on his “moto” and my “moto” covered with dry season dust. Our trip took two days.
Ashley and I took off by motorcycle heading east from Kisangani and John came from the west with two experts in GIS and mapping. The team leaders were already at Epulu. The training has lasted two weeks…in fact it will not be over until tomorrow (this is posted from the Ituri Forest)
A second merchant is pushing his bike up the hill in the background
On the way from Kisangani Ashley and I saw the new Congo. Road repair to Epulu is more than 80% completed. There is one stretch of about 80 km that remains impossible for big trucks. This stretch keeps the bicycle merchants (batoleka) in business. But it is a disappearing profession.
Always a delight to take a “family photo” in front of the Epulu — John, Ashley and me
For John and me it was a thrill to gather again by the Epulu river – it has been the home of our hearts for years. And it was wonderful for all of us to see the rapid progress on TL2, not only in sharing and analyzing what has already been learned about TL2 but also in discussing what needs to be done next.
The trainees concentrating intently, each on his own project
With unexpected primates in unprecedented areas throughout the TL2 landscape, the ability of everyone in the field to identify monkeys from their cries and partial views is essential. A stint in the forest camp of Afarama (Okapi Reserve) was an important test run as there are 13 different species of monkey in this part of the Ituri forest.
Maria and Nick our two cartographic/GIS trainers on a primate transect. Nick is meticulously mapping the hydrology of TL2 to avoid more waterless days on the circuits. Maria is helping us see, through maps, the progress we have made
One of our goals is to map primate distributions. But the first critical step is ferreting out the new primate forms that are apparently up the Lomami
Dino a team leader helping perfect the field methods for primate transects
That requires an ability for quick accurate identification and documentation and that comes from practice, patience and determination …
Back at Afarama, one of the Okapi Reserve’s field camps, going over transect field notes
There is an urgency to all this effort at learning basic natural history. The urgency is Hunting. To our amazement hunting has reached into the most remote areas and spares neither primate in the trees nor antelope on the ground.
John going over field notes with team leaders at Afarama. Faustin and Bernard considering…
Where MUST HUNTING it be controlled? We need to know and map the most critical areas and then push for their protection.
A freshly killed owl-faced monkey being held by a hunter in the Ituri Forest.©Copyright_Reto Kuster. This is one of the unexpected monkeys we have found south of Opala in TL2. It was only known to exist 150 km and two giant rivers further east.
Dear Friends of the Lomami
Category: About the project | Date: Feb 05 2008 | By: admin
Today, I arrived in Kisangani where Ashley has been for nearly a week, preparing the next trip up the Lomami. Tomorrow the two of us leave on trail-worthy motorbikes for the Réserve de Faune à Okapi in the Ituri Forest. John is already there, getting a field training under way. We all return to Kisangani in a week. From Kisangani, this time we will launch a massive dugout up the Lomami River.
So for the next few weeks we will only rarely be able to get on line.
In the meantime, we are collecting pictures and trying to understand more about what is happening and how we can make things happen.
In a week I hope to post an update — and will catch-up on any thoughts you have had in the meantime.
BUSHMEAT 2 : Not-For-Pot Species
Category: Threats, bonobo, wildlife | Date: Feb 03 2008 | By: admin
All animals are vulnerable, but some more than others.
A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago the bonobo, the forest elephant and the okapi were among the least hunted species in Congo. A fortuitous, but unfortunately short term “right to life”. These animals do not withstand pressure from poaching. They are an extreme contrast to rabbits and mice: they birth only one young at a time, they have long intervals between births (>4yrs for bonobo), each pregnancy is many months (>20 for the elephant and >14 for the okapi), and they do not reach sexual maturity quickly (elphant at 9 to 12 years and bonobo have their first young between 13-15years). So, once their populations are reduced they don’t bounce back and, alas, they are easily reduced right down to local extinction. In TL2 these are our most vulnerable animals.
This traditional monkey trap, made entirely of natural forest materials, would not catch bonobo
Even fifty years ago guns were scarce in DR Congo and metal wire for snare traps was a rarity. These, the Big Three, bonobo, elephant and okapi, were abundant, each in its own area of forest. Local people, forest people, understood their special status. In some areas they were taboo –custom forbade killing or eating them –and in other areas, where they were hunted, it might be only older men who were allowed to kill them.
A traditional hunting camp of the Mbuti pygmies in the early 1980s. They set off daily for net hunts, with nets made from the local forest liana they call Kusa. No nylon, no wire.
This was the case in the Ituri Forest where young men risked too much by killing a potent animal like the okapi. The forest might get angry and then they would only have themselves to blame if their wife had a miscarriage or the toddler “lost his breath” and died.
This wire is used to make snare traps. Traps don’t choose. Any animal that steps into it is caught.
Even where taboos did not exist, the means for killing the Big Three required a maximum effort for a minimum success rate. Much easier game was the little antelope or the monkeys that moved in large troops. These smaller animals could be caught with a bow and arrow or in the hunting net; they were also less vulnerable to extinction. To capture elephant or okapi a deep pit had to be dug, covered and disguised, then checked regularly. Occasionally, an okapi or elephant was pursued on foot and speared. To actually kill one was unusual, a cause of celebration, for song, for appreciative quiet. If an elephant, okapi or bonobo was killed, then the familiar spirits of the forest had to be placated.
Passing military marked their presence deep in the Lomami forest on this tree
But, with the long civil war that ended the last century and started this century, military with assault rifles have invaded even the most pristine areas and have changed the vulnerability status of the Big Three. Strangers, unfamiliar and insouciant of local custom, saunter through villages, hungry, unpaid, but with weapons of war slung over their shoulders. Now AK-47s are widely dispersed, hunters move huge distances in search of elephant. They are transients with no use for local taboos. They have no ancestral attachment to the spirits of the forest.
More about the Big Three of the TL2
Bonobo: Found only in DR Congo, and only on the left bank of the Congo/Lualaba River. They are Great Apes along with gorilla, orangutan and chimpanzee. There is only one national park protecting bonobo, the Salonga. Bonobo do much of their traveling on the ground. Mainly vegetarian, they do eat some meat.` An interesting aspect of bonobo social structure is that it is dominated by female coalitions. Although smaller than males, they maintain their social status through cooperation, maintaining strong bonds between unrelated females. Adult males are caring and affectionate with all infants. Sexual access to females is not limited to one male and paternity for young is uncertain. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species : Endangered
A pensive bonobo from Lola ya Bonobo near Kinshasa. Photo by Eleanor Hart
Okapi: Found only in DR Congo, mainly in the northeastern forest but also on the west bank of the Congo River in the TL2 area. They are the lesser known members of the giraffe family and are rarely seen despite their large size (that of a small horse) because of cryptic coloration and long periods of immobility. Okapi are solitary. In relatively rich forest, females have the smaller home range, four to five square km, while males, although smaller, have larger home ranges overlapping those of several females. Okapi are ruminants. They eat only leaves, and only leaves of specific species, stripping the young leaves from branches with their long prehensile tongue.
Okapi at park headquarters in the Réserve de Faune à Okapi. Photo by Kim Gjerstad
Elephant: Of the Big Three, the forest elephant is disappearing fastest. Recent surveys have shown that in the last fifteen years it has been essentially eradicated from areas where it was previously abundant including some national parks. The forest elephant, now generally recognized as a separate species from the savanna elephant, is the lesser known, but this has not protected it ! With each individual eating more than 150kg of leaves and fruit per day, walking long distances and digging for minerals, elephants are the great sculptors of the African forest. When their highways are overgrown, there is a particular silence that settles on the forest. IUCN Red List of threatened species : Vulnerable
Elephant bones scattered on the floor of the Lomami forest show where poaching occurred. We found in the Ituri that such sites were often visited for years afterwards by surviving members of the elephant family
Officially each of these animals has national protection. Our hope is that we can help make that a reality. Everyone who hunts for subsistence or for gain in the forests of the Big Three can avoid killing them easily. A forest in which any of these three animals is allowed to exist in peace – is a forest of hope.
BUSHMEAT 1 : A Healthy Lunch from the TL2
Category: Places, Threats, wildlife | Date: Feb 01 2008 | By: admin
Hunting for bushmeat is as old as the forest and the appetite to eat, but now there are more people , more weapons and a bigger appetite.
A rack for drying and smoking meat is the center of this hunting camp in the Lomami forest.
Unfortunately, for many ordinary people, the most important contribution that the TL2 forest (Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba) makes to their daily life is lunch. Lunch at home, dinner at a restaurant, and finger-food down by the river port. This lunch comes down the river, straight from the forest. It’s bushmeat, nyama ya pori, mboloko…
This duiker was caught in a snare-trap in the Lomami Forest
I remember 20 years ago driving from the Ituri Forest to Kisangani. Even then, when the roads were “good”, it was a 12 hour drive. (A view of the current road deterioration, HERE.) We stopped for lunch at the open-air restaurant on the Lindi river. The “plat de jour” was okapi. The Lindi villagers set their wire snares for large antelope and buffalo. But snares don’t choose. When they checked their trap line, the okapi’s fetlock was wrenched tight and its leg was mangled. So be it. That size and grade of wire was relatively uncommon in the central Ituri Forest, but already in the mid 1980’s okapi had been trapped out of the forests of northern Equateur where the towns were bigger and busier.
Okapi being butchered after it was caught during a net hunt in the Ituri Forest in 1983
During the war years of 2001 and 2002, stalls in the meat section of Mambasa’s central market were piled high with large hunks of smoke-blackened elephant meat. The whole town was eating elephant supu with their manioc fufu. Rogue soldiers with ammunition to spare were stocking ivory to sell in Uganda; the meat was a small extra bonus sent in piles on bicycles down to Mambasa. Elephant meat became cheaper than chicken. Uncontrolled armies with a surfeit of ammunition were new to the Ituri and so was this greed for ivory that splintered elephant families.
Bushmeat already dried, ready for sale and transport out of the forest and to a market
Bushmeat is not history and it is not war – bushmeat is here and now a primary part of many people’s diet in Congo. If you have some money and live in the town, you eat bushmeat. It tastes better than beef and it is more like home, the village. If you live in Congo forests you don’t even need money, just a bit of wire for a snare, or a spear or an arrangement with the military that will get you access to a gun and ammunition.
We are not going to stop bushmeat hunting tomorrow. Not possible, but rather than give up, let’s just adjust the strategy and set goals by place and by species.
A merchant is transporting bushmeat by bicycle out of the Lomami Forest to Opala or Bimbi and from there it will move on to Kisangani.
Places where we can really hope to stop all bushmeat hunting are national parks and national reserves. If the law says NO HUNTING in a clearly defined area and if there are park guards representing the law, surrounding villages can accept and respect the restriction. This has been shown with enough success in enough parks in Congo (not without challenges, see gorilla posts) to make it worth backing.
Species that we could hope to protect everywhere, and not just parks, are the easily recognized, easily avoided, and clearly special species.
Neither special places nor special species are an automatic win in Congo (or anywhere) but they give us a strong hand, they tilt the balance, they make it possible.
More about “not-in-the-pot species” in the next POST — day after tomorrow.
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