April 5, 2013

Hunt for Dispersed Gorillas Continues; Giraneza’s Group Found Instead

Today the Rwanda Development Board supported the Karisoke trackers to search for the dispersed gorillas mentioned in yesterday’s blog:

• Group Gushimira, not seen since March 24th.
• Female Umusatsi, who left Kuryama’s group on March 17th. We assume she is travelling alone (which she did several times in the past).
• Pablo’s group, which had split yesterday, when we saw only seven gorillas led by silverback Musilikale (six plus Musilikale).

Six teams were organized for the search: two for Gushimira’s group, two for Pablo’s group and two for Umusatsi, but they didn’t find any of the dispersed gorillas.

There was one positive development today, however: One member of the team looking for Gushimira found Giraneza’s group. Six days ago we accidentally met Giraneza’s group, which we had stopped following last year after they crossed the border from Rwanda into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, it’s clear that they are back in Rwanda, so we are reorganizing the field teams in order to resume daily monitoring of Giraneza’s group. The gorillas in the group are fine and female Taraja’s newborn seems to be healthy.

Although Pablo’s group was not seen, Musilikale’s subgroup was seen again. It was clear that the seven gorillas had spent another day separately from the main group.

We’ll keep searching tomorrow, hoping that Musilikale’s subgroup will rejoin Pablo’s group.
Veronica