Save Endangered Bonobos in the Congo Rainforest

2023 has been a productive year at our Lilungu site! Since 2005, BCI has supported monitoring teams and collaborated with residents to address community needs. Lilungu links a vital habitat corridor between Sankuru Nature Reserve and Lomami National Park to the south and Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve (and other protected areas) to the north. 

Earlier this year, with the support from funding from The Nature Conservancy, we embarked on a mission to Lilungu. The aim of this mission was to further lay the groundwork for establishing formal protection of the forests.

Stakeholder meetings were held with regional and local leaders, to inform them of the options and opportunities afforded by various protection strategies. Response was enthusiastic, with seven village groupings (groupements) signing letters of support for the project to conduct stakeholder meetings and training, and to provide equipment to our bonobo tracking teams.

A site visit was also conducted, under the leadership of scientific director Dr. Mbangi Mulavwa. The BCI team consulted with local leaders and our partner NGO Association Pour la Protection de Bonobo de Lilungu (APBL) about establishing a new conservation center. Upon site selection in the village of Lilungu, APBL commenced land clearing and fabrication of bricks to build the new center. Dr. Mbangi conducted training and assessments of the three bonobo monitoring teams at Lilungu. This built upon sessions conducted in the spring of 2022, covering respect for wildlife, proper record-keeping, snare removal, bonobo habituation and identification. He also gathered preliminary data to assess the status of the forests and wildlife of Lilungu, through interviews with local people and excursions into the forest with the tracking teams. The initial reports reinforce the urgent need to protect the forests in this valuable wildlife corridor. 

What’s next?

As we write this report, our team is embarking on a follow-up mission to Lilungu. There, they will oversee completion of the construction of the conservation center, conduct additional training of bonobo monitoring teams, and collect more detailed data on the bonobo groups. Community consultations will also continue, in order to prepare for critical activities in the process of establishing legal protection—namely participatory mapping—which will commence in early 2024.  

The progress that has been made so far has been because of the generous support of donors like you! Thank you for standing with us. 

We love sharing updates with you on the research program in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve, and we especially love it when we get to share news of a brand new bonobo baby. We are absolutely over the moon to report that there have been not one, not two, but THREE new additions to the Kokoalongo bonobo group this summer!

Elliot gave birth on June 7th, Madonna on June 14th, and Adele on June 26th. The mothers and their infants are all doing well. No names have been chosen because researchers don’t yet know the sexes of the babies. The scientists take great care to give new mothers and their offspring adequate space and privacy to bond without stress or interruption. You can be sure, though, that the babies will be named after famous musicians, like all the members of their group.

You might have noticed that we listed the mothers but not the fathers. Because of the bonobos’ social structure and mating habits, it is nearly impossible to establish paternity without DNA analysis. In June, members of the research team published a fascinating article titled “Reproductive inequality among males in the genus Pan.” After having spent a considerable amount of time observing the Kokolopori bonobos, lead authors Maud Mouginot and Leveda Cheng found that, despite the generally more egalitarian and peaceful attitude of bonobos, certain males were far more reproductively successful than others. One bonobo in particular, Noir from the Ekalakala group, has sired babies in all the bonobo groups currently being studied in the Yetee forest of Kokolopori. To read more about the team’s discoveries, check out the link at the end of this report

Please stay tuned for more updates about the new arrivals. We’ll share names and photos as soon as we can! Thank you for helping us protect the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve so that these babies and their families can thrive.

Links:

• Reproductive inequality among males in the genus Pan