At the Gorilla Orphanage, Learning to Walk on the Wild Side...
By Ken Wells
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
22 March 1993
Copyright Dow Jones & Co.
BRAZZAVILLE, Congo -- After a short saunter with her class through dense African forest, Albertine N'Dokila begins the day's lessons. She picks up a leaf, examines it. Her students do the same.
She sniffs; they sniff. She nibbles; they nibble.
Her gestures send them off to explore. A few climb nearby trees, and one, Madingo, all but tumbles to the ground in a noisy thrashing of vines. But he returns, displaying wild, edible fruit; pleased, he thumps his chest. Ms. N'Dokila offers a reassuring pat on the head.
"Albertine is the mother and center of the group," explains Hans Otto Kopff, a biologist who, with a visitor, has come to observe today's class.
Ms. N'Dokila is a young Congolese woman with training in primate behavior; her students are six male gorillas between three and four years old, adolescents in human terms. They are orphans, residents of the Gorilla Orphanage Project, the only one of its kind in the world. Their tutelage under Ms. N'Dokila is serious business, for these are also gorillas in the midst of a bold, first-ever experiment to return them to the wild.
In years past, hundreds of young lowland gorillas ended up on the black market of this densely forested central African nation, sold as pets by poachers who first killed their mothers for sport or food. But thanks to recent gorilla-protection laws adopted by the Congolese government, and to the concerted efforts of the orphanage, these western lowland gorillas face a more promising future.
At the moment, there are 20 gorillas here in a wooded 20-acre compound tucked behind the leafy grounds of the Brazzaville zoo. They trickle in at the rate of about one a month, rescued by wardens armed with a law that allows on-the-spot confiscation of any gorilla offered for sale.
Perhaps by late summer, a number of them will trickle out again into the Congo's rain forests. In a cooperative project between the Congo and the orphanage's British sponsor, the Howletts and Port Lympne Foundation, the first six will be released into a remote, 300-square-mile government-owned nature reserve being established 200 miles north of here. Hemmed in on two sides by rivers and protected by rangers and fences, the reserve will offer a chance for gorillas who have escaped their captors to escape a life of cages as well. At the Brazzaville compound, the orphans by day range with their supervisors over the project's forested site. But they spend the night in pens to keep them from roaming into this sprawling city of 600,000, and to protect them from intruders.
"This has never been tried before, but we have every reason to believe that these gorillas will adapt and create their own family units just as wild gorillas do," says Mr. Kopff, a German primate specialist who joined the orphanage about a year ago. His optimism stems from the orphans' prowess as students: The "classes" with Ms. N'Dokila show that, despite their contact with humans, the gorillas retain a keen instinctive ability to master the ways of the wild.
The mission of the orphanage, begun in 1989, is to make the transition as smooth as possible. But it is not that easy. Young gorillas brought here aren't terribly different from children rescued from traumatic situations or bad homes. Many are sick and malnourished.
Many have seen their mothers slaughtered and have been so ill-treated by their captors that "it takes them many weeks to adjust to their human benefactors," says Mark Attwater, a British primate biologist. He joined the orphanage four years ago after a decade working with gorillas raised in captivity at British game parks.
As Mr. Attwater speaks, six-month-old Balumba clings to him for dear life. She currently spends nights at the home of Mr. Attwater and his wife, Helen, a nurse who also serves as the orphanage's medical director. Until they are about a year old, many of the orphanage's baby gorillas require 24-hour care-nighttime bottle feedings with diluted baby formula, and plenty of hugs, body contact and reassurance. This may seem like pampering, but in the wild, mother gorillas don't wean their babies for a year, and often nurture and protect them until the age of four.
Their physical needs met, the orphans are eased into school, teamed up with gorillas of like age and taken to the forest to learn the survival and social skills that wild gorillas learn naturally. Ms. N'Dokila's role is in part to suggest possibilities -- urging her charges up a tree of suitable size and shape to support the sleeping nests common to young wild gorillas, for example. Like any good gorilla mother, she keeps an eye out for any potentially harmful monkey business.
"These are all good boys and they know me very well," Ms. N'Dokila says. "But sometimes they can be jealous of each other." Usually, a motherly grunt and a gesture is enough to break up any serious mischief.
Indeed, her relationship with these gorillas is largely characterized by unbridled mutual affection. When Madingo and Kola (both named for Congo villages) tire of a wrestling match they saunter over to Ms. N'Dokila. One drapes an arm around her neck and another plops into her lap like any tired three-year-old might.
Others amble over to visitors, where they slip huge gorilla hands around cameras and bags, curious for a look. Ms. N'Dokila grunts again, reminding them of their manners. One, seemingly worried that he has offended, pats a visitor gently on the back.
They are nothing if not charming.
But everyone agrees that gorillas are most charming in the wild.
Thus, assuming that the first band of gorillas adapts to the planned reserve, others will follow. Over time, the goal is to reduce the role of the orphanage to a temporary holding facility to nurse confiscated gorillas back to health. There are no gorillas in the reserve now: It would be too dangerous, for health reasons, to place orphans, with their exposure and susceptibility to human diseases, with wild gorillas.
The reserve will also become a center for primate study, as well as a pocket of tranquility for a species whose numbers are steadily shrinking. An estimated 40,000 to 45,000 lowland gorillas still roam central Africa; by contrast, the endangered mountain gorilla has dwindled to perhaps 400 animals. Still, the lowland primate is under constant pressure as forests disappear, cities crowd its habitat and hunting intensifies across much of its range.
The orphanage grew out of an appeal five years ago to British conservationist and philanthropist John Aspinall for help in providing homes for Congo gorillas rescued by private citizens. Mr. Aspinall owns two wild-animal parks in Kent, England; one of them, Howletts, boasts the world's largest population of captive-bred gorillas, with 47 animals.
Mr. Aspinall agreed to accept a few Congo orphans into his animal parks. But expense and red tape -- it is technically illegal to import gorillas, even orphaned ones -- made it clear that a site in the Congo was the only realistic solution. His foundation has spent about $1.5 million thus far to build and maintain the orphanage. It will spend another $1 million building roads, ranger stations and staff facilities for the gorilla reserve.
There isn't any money to be made in gorillas; indeed, even his British parks are loss-making enterprises supported by his other ventures, notably casinos. But Mr. Aspinall says his first encounter with a gorilla 34 years ago left him with two indelible impressions: "It's clear to me that the gorilla is doomed without man's help," he says. "It's also clear that they are a most magnificent animal."