The Rhino Ark / Calgary Zoo Mountain Forest Conservation Partnership

A team dedicated to monitoring, protecting and conserving the Eburru Forest habitat for the critically endangered mountain bongo and other species.

This is a partnership between Rhino Ark and the Calgary Zoo who work closely with the team from the Bongo Surveillance Project.

Trackers and rangers play a vital role in forest conservation by running forest security/ de-snaring foot patrol exercises, checking for evidence of illegal logging, firewood collection, charcoal production and other forms of hunting.

They also conduct bongo surveillance research using fifteen motion-detecting, infrared camera traps. These are positioned in prime bongo habitat in order to document the mountain bongo population. This important conservation tool helps to identify habitat preferences, threats to survival and calculate population numbers of these critically endangered antelopes in the ecosystem. “Critically endangered” is only one category away from “extinct in the wild” in the IUCN listings. The decline of the mountain bongo is attributed to illegal hunting, logging, disease and habitat loss. The last live bongo sighting was in 2020.

The project works closely with the local community and are in the process of collaborating with community stakeholders to re-build their Community Forest Association, to form a forest honey cooperative society, and to improve on a community conservation champions programme.

Loldia House guests who are interested in learning more about the project can request a presentation from the researcher leading the project. There is no set fee for this though a donation toward the work of Rhino Ark for their Eburru programs is encouraged. This must be booked in advance and is subject to availability of the researcher.