I recently heard Wendell Berry say. About a year ago when I was in much despair an old friend wrote to me from Rwanda to let me know he had gotten the opportunity to sit next to Mt. Gorillas on the side of a volcano in what I suspect might be VNP. He reminded me the suffering I was experiencing was worth the effort. Things are a little better now. My virtue today is I hope to meet one of these babes face to face in a land populated with people who feel justice has not failed them. I pray it will not take 46 years. Africa, man, I'll get there.
30 New Baby Gorillas Named in Rwanda
By Edward Rwema (from The Independent in SA)
Volcanoes National Park -
Rwandan President Paul Kagame joined villagers and conservation workers on the edges the national park on Saturday to give names to 30 rare mountain gorilla babies - including the only recorded set of twins to survive to the age of one.Conservation workers and researchers traditionally name primates they track after identifying each one based on the patterns formed by wrinkles on their faces.Saturday's naming ceremony, however, is the largest and most public ever held in this small central African nation.
The ceremony - including traditional dances by warriors armed with sticks resembling spears and poems praising development projects financed by revenue from mountain gorilla tracking - will become an annual event intended to pull in more visitors to Rwanda's leading tourist attraction, said Fidelle Ruzigandekwa, head of the Rwanda Wildlife Agency.
Children from villages around the park proposed several names for each of the mountain gorilla infants and an official chose one in a ceremony modeled on Rwanda's tradition."The naming ceremony reflects our culture. We do it in families in Rwanda when we name new babies," Ruzigandekwa said.
There are no mountain gorillas in captivity, and all of them - just 380 at last count - live in central Africa, the adults eating up to 31kg a day of bamboo shoots, wild celery, nettles and ants.The birth of the twins in May 2004 - only the third ever recorded - delighted conservation experts.In 1986, the first recorded pair of twins died after just nine days. Of the second pair, born in 1991, one infant died within a month. The other survived to adulthood, only to be killed by poachers attempting to steal a baby gorilla in 2002.
Gorilla troops are ferociously protective of their young and poachers often have to kill mothers and other adults to steal babies.For Rwanda, conservation of mountain gorillas is more than simply preserving the last of the world's largest primates.It also is an opportunity for the country to heal from the 1994 genocide in which more than half a million Tutsi ethnic minority and politically moderate Hutus were killed in a 100-day slaughter.
Mountain gorillas "play an essential role in contributing to the positive image of Rwanda and act as ambassadors on the international scene by raising the profile of the country", said Chantal Rosette Rugamba, head of the Rwanda Tourism Board."Gorillas act as a fundamental engine for the national economy - tourism ranks at the third position in terms of foreign currency generating, and gorillas are and remain the main attraction that currently brings more than 20 000 visitors to Rwanda every year," Rugamba said.
Rwanda, with an estimated 8,2 million people, earned about $2,5-million (about R17-million) from tourism in 2004, Ruzigandekwa said.Volcanoes National Park, Africa's first, was established by Rwanda's Belgian colonial rulers in 1925 after Carl Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History made a plea to protect the gorillas.It lies on the Rwandan side of a mountain range that straddles the borders of Rwanda, Congo and Uganda. Adjacent parks in Congo and Uganda are both known as Virunga National Park. The three parks are home to the world's entire mountain gorilla population.
A census conducted in late 2003 found that the number was up 17 percent since the last count 15 years earlier.The ceremony to name mountain gorilla babies will be capped by dinner on the shores of Lake Kivu, in the north-western province of Gisenyi, to raise funds for conservation efforts.They include an interactive educational center to help educate local residents and the international community on the mountain gorillas, creation of a buffer zone around the national park to curb illegal encroachment by humans and reduce conflict between people and wildlife and support development initiatives for communities surrounding the park. - Sapa-AP
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