Fam­ily of goril­las to be released in Gabon by Aspinall Foundation

201227Oct20:29

Fam­ily of goril­las to be released in Gabon by Aspinall Foundation

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 27 Octo­ber 2012 | mod­i­fied 05 Decem­ber 2012
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With its Back To The Wild ini­tia­tive the Aspinall Foun­da­tion (TAF) is aim­ing at becom­ing the first in the world to release an entire gorilla fam­ily into the wild. Goril­las that have all but one been born and raised in cap­tiv­ity. Only the head of the fam­ily, the male Djala, was born in the wild and spec­tac­u­larly res­cued from poach­ers in Africa, after which he was brought to Port Lympne in the 1990s.

Gorilla enclosure HowlettsThe gorilla fam­ily com­prises of the 30 year old Djala, five females and five off­spring. The release of the west­ern low­land goril­las (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) is planned for early 2013. Seven hand-​raised goril­las born in TAF’s Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Ani­mal Parks pre­ceded this sched­uled release. This took place between 1996 and 2006 in Congo and Gabon, together with 43 wild-​born orphan goril­las from TAF’s con­fis­ca­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes to re-​establish viable pop­u­la­tions of the gorilla within this ecosys­tem. These projects are the Foundation’s flag­ship with its pro­tec­tion of almost a mil­lion acres of the coun­tries’ unique forest/​savannah ecosys­tem. It was the first large wilder­ness area to see goril­las hunted to extinc­tion.

The project is part of TAF’s long term mis­sion to stress what the pur­pose of zoos and wildlife parks should be — to pro­tect endan­gered ani­mals and pre­serve the habi­tats that they live in by restor­ing species in their nat­ural habi­tats through rein­tro­duc­tion and in-​situ ani­mal pro­tec­tion projects.

True con­ser­va­tion must be fun­da­men­tal to the exis­tence of any col­lec­tion of cap­tive ani­mals in the 21st cen­tury. We believe this has to involve the pro­tec­tion, where nec­es­sary, of endan­gered species cou­pled with suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able breed­ing pro­grammes — always with the ulti­mate aim wher­ever pos­si­ble of return­ing ani­mals to the wild. This can be the only pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the 21st cen­tury for the exis­tence of col­lec­tions of ani­mals in captivity
(Damian Aspinall, founder of the Aspinall Foun­da­tion and son of John Aspinall who started the ani­mal col­lec­tions of Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Ani­mal Parks)

In addi­tion to the goril­las, the Back To The Wild cam­paign is also plan­ning to release six Javan Gib­bons, eight Javan lan­gurs and two bull ele­phants into pro­tected areas of the wild. Three black rhino have already been released this year and are all doing well back in the wild in Tan­za­nia.


(Source: The Aspinall Foun­da­tion News, 23.10.2012; Ken­tOn­line News, 24.10.2012)

Tags: con­ser­va­tion | zoos | Aspinall Foun­da­tion | Howletts | Port Lympne | gorilla | Congo | Gabon
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