CERCONEWS February 2010

are species that have barely been studied either in under captive conditions or the wild. For this reason, we hope to carry out further studies at our Calabar HQ site in the future and to expand our research programme, which is currently almost entirely based at our forest site. The two staff members conducting the research have both recently been promoted. Austin our vet nurse became Senior staff, and Matthew was given full time research responsibilities in addition to his keeper duties. Both staff have shown a real flair for this type of work and we look forward to reporting their findings in a later edition of CERCONEWS.

Following several weeks of training, two Calabar staff, Matthew Etim and Austin Igbebor, have begun collecting behavioural data as part of a project sponsored by the International Primatological Society. The research is focused on the captive care of putty-nosed guenons and will compare levels of aggression and stereotypic behaviour in two groups before and after their relocation to a new larger enclosure.

The IPS grant received in March 2009 is being used in combination with parts kindly donated and specially or-dered from the USA by Gary and Elizabeth Young

to construct the new Putty enclosure. It’s design (also by Gary Young) means that it is portable and therefore it can be easily moved with us to our new site located in the University of Calabar (UNICAL) grounds. Once the animals are moved we expect to see a reduction in aggression, stereotypical behaviours and stress indicators as the animals will be able to move further away from con-specifics during difficult social situations. We hope this research will high-light the importance of en-closure size and design and help us to attract further funding from donors for ad-ditional large enclosures at the new site.

Many of the pri-mates housed at CERCOPAN

Matthew beginning his putty-nosed guenon research

Research Expansion at CERCOPAN Providing vital Captive Care Information

I N S I D E T H I S

I S S U E :

Research Expansion at CERCOPAN Providing vital Captive Care Information

1

From the Director

2

Welcome Rachel! 2

New Arrival! 2

Specialised Internships; No Ordinary Class Field Trip!

3

Pica Reunited With Mother

4

Freelance Producer visits Rhoko

4

Microscopes donated

4

First step in pre-release

5

Climate Change adaptation pro-ject moves to next stage

5

Want to be a apart of it?

6

CERCO-NEWSF E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 V O L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

P A G E 2

“In the wild, yellow

billed kites are

scavengers and feed

on carrion, fish and

even termites. We

have therefore been

feeding the Kite, who

we have called Bert, a

mix of dead rats and

meat scraps bought

at the market“

Claire Coulson CERCOPAN Director

Welcome Rachel!!!

New Arrival!

From the Director I’ve got a list on the wall in my office. I’m sure you’ve all got one just like mine. At the end of a gruelling day you stare up at it, and vow yet again to make a start on Item Number 1……tomorrow. If only day-to-day short-term emergen-cies didn’t constantly call for your attention! Capacity Enhancement, building local skills up to international standards so that we become self-sustaining, is a very high priority on my list. So it was very gratifying as we brought together this month’s issue, to see just how much progress we’ve made in the recent past. In our lead article you can read about how two of our

National staff are now contributing directly to our Research programme by conduct-ing behavioural studies on captive primate groups in Calabar. Typically in the past, visiting volunteers have carried out such work. With the arrival of our new, highly experienced Community Conservation Manager, Rachel Hemingway, our ability to enhance the skills within our host community in Alternative Livelihoods has taken a big leap forward. And our Vet Nurse Austin had a very productive month working along-side visiting Vet student Conor Rowan. It works both ways. Austin’s years of experience working with

primates eased Conor in to his working with monkeys for the first time. Likewise, visiting students Claire and Eleri gained the practical experience they need as a requirement for their degrees in Wildlife Conservation, while providing directly to our operational needs. There’s a thought for those of you considering contributing your skills through our Working Holidays volunteer programme. Glancing up at my list again, the progress we have made motivates me to press on and set higher standards for achieve-ments for the future. I hope you all learn to love your lists too!

hoped he would be able to sell the bird to our staff for a handsome profit, but Abakum eventually managed to convince him both to hand it over freely and never to take another again.

In the wild, yellow billed kites are scavengers and feed on carrion, fish and even termites. We have therefore been feeding the Kite, who we have called Bert,

This month we received quite a surprise when our Education Officer, Abakum Owai walked into the office brandishing a juvenile bird of prey!

The bird, believed to be a yellow-billed kite, was brought to CERCOPAN by it’s former owner ’Wisdom’ , who had taken the bird from it’s nest and cared for it for a month. Initially, Wisdom

a mix of dead rats and meat scraps bought at the market.

We are minimizing human contact as much as possible and have placed Bert in a large enclosure where he is able to practice flying. We hope to eventually release Bert back into the wild, once he is able to fend for himself. Check out our blog www.cercopan.wildlifedirect.org to follow his progress!

Iko Esai, and also expand-ing our community programme into the surrounding villages.

Previously Rachel was employed by ‘Water for Africa’, which took her to many countries including Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia.

Additionally, she has also volunteered in Bolivia, the Philippines and China.

With her vast experience we look forward to integrating her ideas into our already successful programme and we welcome her into the CERCOPAN family.

After months of searching, CERCOPAN has finally found a new Community Conservation Manager.

Rachel Hemingway, from the UK, joined us on the 29th. She will be living and working in our host community, Our latest CERCOPAN

addition: a Yellow Billed Kite

Specialized Internships; No Ordinary Class

Field Trip!

P A G E 3

CERCOPAN offers tailored internship programmes to college/university students and individuals seeking experience in order to pursue a career in conservation. The internships are generally based at Rhoko our forest site, but there are also limited opportu-nities available for interns with veterinary experience at our Calabar HQ rehabilitation centre.

In the last month, we were very lucky to have a visiting veterinarian volunteering between our Rhoko and Calabar sites. Conor Rowan, from Ireland, is just months away from completing his veterinary training and decided to carry out some of the final practical requirement for his course here with us. During his time at CERCOPAN he was involved in numerous tasks including TB tests, monkey relocations, stitching up monkey ‘war wounds’ , dealing with primate ailments such as abscesses and spaying

our Calabar cat. Conor’s work proved extremely valuable to the organisation and both he and our Vet Nurse, Austin, learnt a great deal from one another.

In addition, we also currently have Plymouth students Claire and Eleri interning with us to satisfy three months of the practical component required by their Wildlife Conservation degrees. Claire and Eleri are based at our Rhoko site and will spend three months there, gaining experience in all aspects of our forest and primate conservation work.

The Plymouth students are doing extremely well and have already worked alongside our experienced primate keepers, learning hands on animal care and welfare techniques including feeding, cleaning, and producing enrichment ideas for enclosures. They were also involved in the transfer of

some of our primates to new enclosures, which involved darting the monkeys and taking morphological measurements.

Claire and Eleri have acquired habitat surveying skills and have monitored fruit production and seasonal change whilst assisting our long-term phenology research. They have also gathered behavioural data on our primates using scan and focal sampling and have conducted surveys of Crematogaster ant nests as part of an international butterfly survey being undertaken at the site.

If you are interested in undertaking an internship at CERCOPAN, there are currently still opportunities available in 2010! Please contact Director Claire Coulson ([email protected])to discuss the programme, availability, costs and booking. Further information is also available on our website www.cercopan.org.

V O L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

“They have also

gathered

behavioural data

on our primates

using scan and

focal sampling and

have conducted

surveys of

Crematogaster ant

nests as part of an

international

butterfly survey

being undertaken

at the site”

Conor and our Vet Nurse, Austin, learning from each other while carrying out veterinary procedures

Eleri providing enrichment to Rhoko’s resident Managbeys

P A G E 4

“Pica has also very

successfully

re-established close

bonds with

Marvelous and

Marley, her half

brother and sister

with whom she

played constantly

when she was young”

Pica finding her feet back in family surroundings again

Pica Reunited With Mother Pica, one of our infant mangabeys, has recently been reunited with her mother after many months of separation.

Born to Peace, a first time mother, Pica had a very difficult start to life. Her mother sadly failed to provide the attention, care and milk she needed, leaving CERCOPAN staff with no choice but to remove the infant and hand-rear her.

During this time her friendly and playful personality shone though, making her a favorite with

keepers, volunteers and all of the other monkeys housed near her enclosure.

We were initially concerned about introducing Pica back to the group as her father, the leader, is a particu-larly dominant male and can be quite aggressive at times. Consequently, we have sepa-rated her and Peace into a satellite attached to the main enclosure to monitor her interactions with the group before going ahead with a full reintroduction .

At the moment Peace’s behaviour is still not

overly maternal, but the pair are definitely starting to develop a much better relationship now that Pica no longer requires round the clock attention. Pica has also very successfully re-established close bonds with Marvelous and Marley, her half brother and sister with whom she played constantly when she was young. Whilst all of the play-ing and grooming with her siblings currently takes place through a mesh divide, very soon they will be back together as a proper family.

Microscopes donated sis and parasitology tests, which are undertaken each month to ensure that all of our resident primates remain healthy and parasite free. In addition, the old CERCOPAN veterinary microscope will be sent to the Rhoko research centre to aid flora and fauna identification.

Donations of equipment are always very gratefully received by CERCOPAN as funds to

update equipment can be hard to find. In the past, among other things, generous donors have provided veterinary drugs and supplies, new laptop computers, uniforms, electrical inverters and batteries. If you or the company where you work have any equipment available for donation that you think may be useful to CERCOPAN please contact us today at [email protected].

CERCOPAN staff , were very excited when we recently received the news that two microscopes had been donated to the organization and were on their way to Nigeria.

CERCOPAN applied to receive the Microscopes when the Zoological Department of Oxford University updated their equipment. The microscopes will be used by the veterinary staff to perform faecal analy-

Freelance Producer Visits Rhoko contain over half of the coun-tries remaining rainforest, but also 78% of its primate spe-cies. Emma stopped for a few hours at our forest site to gather clips on the rainforest, our endangered monkeys, and our camp, interviewing the occasional member of staff as she went.

This month, CERCOPAN Rhoko was visited by Emma Brumpton , a freelance producer associated with National Geographic. Searching for footage on the endangered primates of Nigeria she was attracted to Cross River as not only does the state

We wish Emma the best of luck with her quest to attain other good footage around the country and are waiting in anticipation to see if we appear on any channels! So keep you’re eyes peeled—you may notice one of our mangabeys on T.V in the near future!

Austin putting to use one of our older microscopes

C E R C O - N E W S

Further advances made towards release P A G E 5 V O L U M E 2 , I S S U E 2

Plans to release our second group of Mona monkeys into the Rhoko core area continued to move apace this month, with the transfer of all captive monas already based at the site to carefully spaced forest enclosures. This step was vital to avoid having an area with a high density of captive Monas. Such an area could attract any released animals and discourage them from setting up their territory in a truly wild part of the forest away from enclosures, and provisioned

food. Over the past several months, we worked very hard to attain wood and build the forest enclosures, which were finally completed last month. Rhoko staff, along with visiting vet Conor Rowan and interns Claire Lofthouse and Eleri Jenkins, moved the animals to their new enclosures, an operation that took several hours. Each Mona monkey was first darted and then whilst asleep, full health checks were performed

and blood samples taken before they were moved to their new home.

In the future we intend to supplement the Rhoko captive groups with additional juveniles with the aim of conduct-ing further releases in late 2010/ealry 2011.

be provided with the help of Cross River State NGO Mfaminyen. Farmer Field Schools will be run in Iko Esai, and neighbouring community Agoi. The Field Schools will fall under the umbrella of the Sustainable Tree Crops Programme (STCP), which is a public-private partnership managed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The programme seeks to generate growth in rural income among tree crop farmers in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Additionally we will be setting up an alternative livelihoods programme for households (such as bee-keeping, and Non-Timber Forest Product domes-

tication), and providing garri-processing equipment for women (garri is a local staple food made from cassava). Improved agricultural techniques, and livelihood diversification, can reduce the dependency on, and therefore destruction of the natural resource base. The rainforest can remain as a long-term provider of sustainable (non-destructive) livelihoods, and exist as the fall-back resource to help survive short-term, extreme climate change impacts.

Phase 1 of the Building Nigeria’s Response to Climate Change (BNRCC) project was recently completed. It involved assessing the problems already caused, or predicted, due to climate change, and the types of potential solutions that the target communities would like to see tested. We are now about to pilot the chosen adaptation strategies in Phase 2. The existing Community Land-Use Management Plan in our host community, Iko Esai, will be adjusted and further extended, incorporating the results of the Phase 1 hazard mapping exercise. Protection of watersheds and improved farming practices incorporated into the plan will be aimed at ensuring continued availability of water all year round for domestic use. Training in the use of fuel-efficient wood stoves will

Climate Change adaptation project moves

on to next stage

‘’Improved

agricultural

techniques, and

livelihood

diversification,

can reduce the

dependency on,

and therefore

destruction of

the natural

resource base”

Etimbuk in good hands

Garri processing in Iko Esai

All photos in this newsletter were taken at CERCOPAN or Iko Esai by staff, volunteers and visitors.

Photo Credits: Amy Baxter, Sylvain Lemoine, Claire Lofthouse © Copyright CERCOPAN 2010

Design & Layout by Claire Coulson; Written by Claire Coulson, Amy Baxter, Sylvain Lemoine; Edited by Claire Coulson

www.cercopan.org http://cercopan.wildlifedirect.org

WANT TO BE A PART OF IT?

• Stay in touch with our on-going programme by bookmarking our home page http://www.cercopan.org/ and our Blog site http://cercopan.wildlifedirect.org/

• Volunteer for CERCOPAN in either Nigeria or

the UK. We offer a range of different programmes so there is something for everyone! Visit our website volunteer section for further details.

• Help CERCOPAN attain corporate funding. If

you work for a corporate sponsor who may be interested in funding CERCOPAN please contact [email protected]

• Undertaken a sponsored event to raise

funds for CERCOPAN.

• Make a cash donation to CERCOPAN via our

website...every little helps! • Buy a gift for friends or family from the

Good Gifts Catalogue (www.goodgifts.org). You can buy a month's supply of fruit for growing CERCOPAN orphan monkeys - called in the catalogue 'A-peeling Monkeys' for only £20! The price of the gift is passed on to CERCOPAN. So, it is an excellent way of solving your gift problems, and support-ing our work! Alternatively visit the CERCO-PAN gift shop on our website today.

• Donate useful goods and equipment such as

building and fencing materials, veterinary medicines, old laptop computers etc. or services such as printing, blood testing and architectural design.