Tofala Rainforest Thrills German Researcher
After spending six weeks in the ERuDeF Cross River gorilla expedition programme in Cameroon in 2012, Sebastian Linarz was thrilled by discoveries he made that he could not help but search for an opportunity for a more intimate experience.
Behold in 2013, his supervisor gave him the green light to carry out a Ph D research on the “Comprehensive study about the ecology and behavior of Cross River Gorillas and Nigeria-Cameroon Chimpanzees in the Lebialem Highlands in Cameroon”. By January 15, 2014, he was already in Cameroon.
Armed with a dozen camera traps, a GPS and other gadgets, Linarz said for the next six months he would leave no stone unturned at determining the nest sites, feeding ecology, population size and genetic analysis of the Cross River gorillas and the Cameroon-Nigerian chimpanzees in the Mak-Betchou and Proposed Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary. With this motivation, Linarz left for the Tofala Rainforest where he planted the camera traps, tagged nests and other ape signs, tracked and collected hairs and dung samples of gorillas and chimpanzees. Three months after, he came back with lingering memories and discoveries.
“We mounted 12 camera traps; two per track to get images of gorillas and chimpanzees so that if the animal comes from the left, we have the face, or from the right we will still have the face. Two weeks after, we were marveled by the images we saw. For the first time, an image of a Cross River gorilla was gotten on camera including different groups of chimpanzees; both young and old, many with babies. Many other animals like duikers, some cat species, squirrels, preussus monkey and other animals we could not identify were captured. I also discovered that chimpanzees like moving on the tracks but gorillas avoid the track,” Linarz said, adding that the “baby chimpanzees” is an indication of eminent growth in the apes’ population in Tofala.
Then that indelible day; “It was Monday evening; we had just come back from hiking and were resting when all of a sudden we got chimpanzees coming down the mountain, probably to make sleeping nests close to our camp. We decided to go and look for them. When we reached the place, it was already dark. The light of our flashlights indicated our presence. Suddenly, there was panic in the group. Chimpanzees were screaming all around us. They were so afraid that they started to pee down the trees. While some of them climbed down and ran away, others instead climbed up and hid in trees. We spotted one chimpanzee with the flashlight far up the tree but could not snap any picture because it was dark. The next day we returned to the nest sight and saw ten nests, which we tagged to determine the decay rate,” said Linarz.
The unbelievable: “We found chimpanzees’ nests and just a few meters away from gorillas’ nests unlike what I knew indicating that they are not threatened by the presence of each other. A hard-to-believe discovery.”
With the aid of a “liquid”, the German researcher collected dung and hairs of gorillas and chimpanzees for genetic analyses.
These exciting discoveries almost became sour when Linarz got to the southern part of Tofala.
“I was very disturbed by what I saw in the southern part of the forest; most of the forest has been destroyed by the villagers and all the apes and wildlife had escaped. So, there was no sign of any apes in this part of the forest. And I said to myself, the soonest Tofala is gazetted the better it is for these our cousins”.
Linarz is set for unprecedented discoveries in the proposed Mak-Betchou Chimpanzee Sanctuary.
