Gorilla gazette - Issue 5

Welcome to Gorilla gazette!

Postings from the gorilla inhabitants of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in Western Uganda.

STOP PRESS! Large interloper takes over Gorilla gazette!

Actually, shall we say, I’ve just moved in. And, if there’s anyone in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest who is bigger than a silverback, it’s me, or my friends and family.

I’ve been told it’s polite to introduce oneself at the beginning of an acquaintanceship. 

I don’t have a name, unlike many of the gorillas, but I am a Forest elephant. You can call me Enjojo, which is what the local people call a Forest elephant. Now you may not have heard of Forest elephants before, so let me fill you in. 

In Africa, most of the elephants you see when you go on a Safari are Savanna elephants. They are larger than we are, and have tusks that curve outwards. We, Forest elephants, make up a quarter to a third of the total elephant population in Africa and we are smaller and darker and our ears are more rounded. If you get close enough to count them, which I wouldn’t recommend, we have five toenails on each forefoot and four on our hind feet. And, our tusks point downwards, which makes it easier when we go among the trees. Unfortunately it also means that our tusks are highly prized by poachers for the international illicit ivory trade, and more than 60% of Forest elephants have been poached in the past decade. There has been a sharp decline in our numbers as, apart from poaching, there has been a loss of habitat. Indeed, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), our numbers have fallen by more than 86% in the past 31 years, while the Savanna elephants have declined by some 60% in the last 50 years.

It was long before my time, but I think we came to Bwindi from the savannas, and decided to stay, adapting accordingly. Currently there are over 120 Forest elephants living in herds of five to eight, especially in the Southern sector in areas of Rushaga and Nyabaremura.  The terrain is too steep for us to move around on in parts of Nkuringo, therefore we are rarely seen near there. In the Eastern sector of Ruhija we move around in large herds of 15 to 25 because the Mubwindi swamp, which is over two square kilometers, is there and we like to have a swim or just a mud bath. 

In other parts of Bwindi, you might see where we have been, as our footprints are rather large. But I do have to say that the Ladies who are the members of NCENT, living in Nkuringo and their friends don’t like us very much when we decide to come of the Forest and walk all over their potato patches. I sort of understand it but we might have been a bit hungry or just curious. Most of the time our diet includes trees, bushes, herbs and grasses and sedges, but we also visit salt, or mineral, licks and even consume soil, for the necessary minerals missing from their diets. Generally, we have a reputation as being destructive, although we do scatter seeds around, which helps the vegetation.

I do have to say, however, that we like to eat the sorts of vegetables and potatoes that the Ladies grow, for a change. When we go to their gardens, however, they scare us to make us go back into the forest by shooting in the air, or otherwise they make fires near their gardens and even put chili peppers on things, or dried dung around. Really, it’s not very nice being considered a trouble maker. 

The NCENT Ladies spend a lot of time working in their gardens. They grow two kinds of potatoes, the white ones that they call Irish potatoes and which they use for cooking chips and mashed potatoes. They also mix them with beans, or with matooke (which is a type of plantain) and ground nut sauce. In addition they plant cabbages and other vegetables and now are able to feed their families with eggs from the chickens that they have been given for performing for visitors to Bwindi. They want to keep pigs for more protein… providing pigs for meat also helps keep us animals in the forest safe as they won’t try to use snares or traps for bushmeat. 

We’d love you to come to Bwindi to visit us, though I do have to say that we, Forest elephants will be very hard to find. 

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