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FIRST CHIMPANZEE CAUGHT ON CAMERA TRAP

The presence of chimpanzee in Garamba National Park was historically recorded by Saeger (Verschuren 1958). More recently, Ndey (2009) recorded chimpanzee in the vicinity of Suko and local people and park rangers have seen chimpanzee in the Mondo Missa hunting sector.

In 2008 a monitoring programme was set up in order to identify their distribution and habitat. The monitoring involved chimpanzee tracking on foot (more than 3000km have been covered), recording calls and counting nests. For the past year, camera traps have been set up at various places, 10 to 15 days at a time, in an attempt to photograph chimapanzee.  On 28 November 2011 we placed a camera trap in the Mondo Missa region and the first shot of a chimpanzee was taken on 11 December 2011. Hopefully this heralds the start of many more photos. All the data is catalogued and will be used in designing a census strategy to determine the size and distribution of the Garamba population. This data would also provide insight into the distribution of other ape species, the distribution of human activities and possible threats to the resident chimpanzee population.

Setting the camera trap                                    Listening for chimpanzee calls

Date: 26 Jan 2012