cerconews january 2011
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TRANSCRIPT
is enacted in a sustainable way, through monitoring and enforcing by‐laws, such as where farming is allowed (see October 2010 CERCONEWS).
The second area we help them with is in gaining external support for development projects in the village, and in implementing those projects.
Following dis‐cussions with key people in the community, the CCDC concluded that the most pressing areas in need of attention were renovation of the secondary school, and a bridge on the road to the highway that allows access to external markets and services.
With our assistance in
researching grants and in proposal writing, the village successfully applied to the Cross River State Social and Community Fund for support for these projects.
The CCDC, led by Chairman Stanley Obo, has been working hard within the village to provide the 30% counterpart funding required, and to organise the community labour. Community involvement and support has been extremely strong, with labour and materials provided by willing volunteers.
Now the school renovations are nearly complete, work is expected to begin on the bridge within a few weeks. Hopefully this will prove to be just the start of a long and productive era for the Iko Esai CCDC.
It’s been just over a year now since a new Community Conservation & Development Comm‐ittee (CCDC) was elected in our host village Iko Esai, and we are able to report that they have made excellent progress on all fronts. Their latest project of renovating the secondary school in the village is testament that our considerable efforts to re‐start and energise this organisation have been very worthwhile.
Our goal is to build the capacity of the CCDC to the point that Iko Esai village has ownership of its needs for development. We are training the CCDC in two areas. Firstly to ensure that the village’s land use
I N S I D E TH I S
I S S U E :
Help yourselves! 1
From the Director
2
Checking his list 2
A game of two halves
2
New property… stunning views!
3
Mama mia here I go again
4
Calabar Skill Centre
4
Where there’s less smoke….
5
A Princely gift 5
Want to be a part of it ?
6
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1
Help yourselves!
V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1
CERCO‐NEWS
Renovations to the
secondary school in
Iko Esai
Ricky Joe, the Project Manager
P A G E 2
Claire Coulson
CERCOPAN
Director
Checking his list
A game of two halves
From the Director A beautiful childhood
novel that I still love incorporates the belief that the colour of the first butterfly that you see in the year establishes your fortune for the remainder of the year. Yellow heralds a happy year, and luckily for me the Common Grass Yellow (Eurema hecabe) was fluttering around low in my compound on January 1st.
With the delivery of a new 4WD truck shortly afterwards (see final article), who am I to question the truth of this belief? Our trucks are the backbone of our operation, and the
constant repairs required to the ageing vehicle that we previously had in Rhoko was a permanent source of disruption and stress that we can now at last discount thanks to the generous support of the Prince Bernhard Fund for Nature.
Our new monkey arrivals this month (see page 4) came to us in good health. That made me very happy: it’s more often the case that orphans are brought to us having suffered severe neglect or abuse.
I am also pleased with the results that are now coming through from the
CCDC (front page), when I recall how hard we worked to get this group re‐established and functioning the way it was intended.
And with all the positive progress of our other project work that you can read about in the remaining articles, I really like the way 2011 is going.
If you haven't seen a butterfly yet this year, you might want to get a good local guidebook and check out where the yellow ones are to be found!
annual Christmas football tournament!
It’s a hotly contested event, and CERCOPAN is always in the thick of it each year.
In the round robin stage this time around we started with a goalless draw with Eyeyen, and followed this with an extremely narrow 3‐2 loss against the much‐fancied Ebontema team.
You know you are well‐integrated into local village life when they ask you to participate in the
Charging into the semi‐final, we suddenly lost 6‐2 to Otenikapang. Then, In the play‐offs, Heaven surprisingly defeated us 2‐1 and we finished 4th out of 6 teams. Well you can’t win the event if you want to keep good relationships, can you?!
For the record, Ebontema won 1‐0 against Otenikapang in the final, by a penalty.
bag of rice and salt for their family. The Chiefs Council of Iko Esai and the Community Conservation Development Committee (CCDC) were given additional rice and salt to share between them. The annual Christmas gift serves as our thank you to the village for all of the help and support they provide CERCOPAN throughout the year. As
the Christmas gift involves meeting with a member of every single Esai household, we also use this opportunity to gather information regarding household size, age of family members, Head of household and household income. This information is used to identify and target those most vulnerable, for future sustainable livelihoods projects.
Distribution of the annual Christmas gift began on 24th December and continued over a two week period. Mike Ekpe, our Community Liaison Officer, maintained a post in the centre of the village and
each household was invited to send a representative to collect a
The
tournament
about to begin
Mike Ekpe distributing
the Christmas gift
New property...stunning views!
P A G E 3
This month saw the completion of a new enclosure at Rhoko camp. Since their arrival in 2004, Mona monkeys Etimbuk and Twiggy have been housed at the same site as all of our other captive monkeys at Rhoko, including the large Mangabey group.
But they have now been moved to a new forest site remote from their former location. This is a very important activity relative to the next release of Monas into the forest and long‐term freedom for the latter.
We are dispersing our resident Mona population across a variety of sites to reduce the risk that the Release group might return to the centre of captive populations.
Our short‐term construc‐tion volunteer Tjark Plat masterminded the building of the new enclosure and now, not only do they have more stimulation with their new forest view, but with the new environmental enrichment added, they have a plethora of logs, shrubs, swings and branches to add more levels and variety to their living space.
Once the enclosure was completed it was up to our
Vet to make a trip up from Calabar to move them.
This involved both monkeys being blow‐darted, and then the anaesthetised animals were carried along forest trails to their new home far deeper into the forest.
Both animals quickly recovered from their experience and are now enjoying their new surroundings.
Whilst visiting Rhoko,
Veterinarian Graham Brown also took the opportunity to take blood samples from the Release group for a final health screen.
Analysis of the blood samples is an important preparation step prior to the group’s imminent reintroduction, and is performed to minimise the risk of our release monkeys passing on any diseases to the resident population of Monas in the forest.
V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1
“Both animals
quickly recovered
from their
experience and
are now enjoying
their new
surroundings”
Etimbuk loving the
new enclosure
Veterinarian Graham
blow‐darting in
preparation for the
move
P A G E 4
Last year we were fortunate enough to receive a captive care grant from the International Primatological Society to build a new mangabey enclosure. This grant was used along with money from various other individual donors to demolish two
enclosures, next door to each other, and build two new and much better enclosures on the same site. The old enclosures were constructed mainly out of wood and mesh. The wood had not lasted well and was in constant need of repair. We have reused a lot of the mesh and this time constructed the framework of the enclosure out of steel. These new enclosures should stand the test of time much better. For this project we purchased a welding
machine along with an angle grinder. Tjark, with the aid of our Nigerian staff, has completed one enclosure, and the second is well on the way.
This has been a great opportunity for a highly skilled volunteer from the UK to come to Nigeria and capacity‐build and pass on some of his varied skills to our staff. Among other things, Tjark has trained staff members to cut and prepare lengths of steel pipe with the grinder and then weld different sections of pipe together.
These are extremely useful skills, as we are currently in the process of replacing a number of other enclosures, and looking to move our operations to a new site at the University of Calabar.
The new enclosures have been constructed in such a way that they can be taken apart and assembled at the new site.
We have been lucky for the last few months to have had Tjark Plat, a skilled welder and enclosure builder, join our team. Tjark has been building primate enclosures in the UK for many years so we have been putting his experience to good use.
Calabar Skill Centre
New equipment,
and new skills
Mama mia, here I go again This month saw the
arrival of two new Putty‐Nosed Guenons, Chico and Mama. The two guenons are victims of the bush meat trade.
Their mother would have been killed to be eaten, but her babies survived, being too small.
Instead they were kept as pets in a village near Akampa to the North of Calabar. After three years, their keeper decided that he could not look after them any longer.
Fortunately he got to hear about CERCOPAN, and he asked us to take them into long‐term care.
Chico, a male, and Mama, a female, are both about three and a half years old and are clearly best buddies, having spent
all this time in the same enclosure together.
The housing they were kept in was much better than we normally see, and both of them were in good health and body condition when they arrived, so they had not been poorly treated, as is often the case.
They are currently being kept in our quarantine area before any attempts are made to introduce them both to a bigger group. But presently their prospects look good for rehabilitation within a more natural social structure than they could have hoped for before.
Best buddies
P A G E 5 V O L U M E 3 , I S S U E 1
A Princely gift
Where there’s less smoke…. Fuel‐efficient wood‐
stoves, produce less smoke, use about one third of the wood required, and they cook quicker! For women in the village, that looks like a winning formula.
As the ones who have to trek to the forest to gather the wood for cooking, this will mean a lighter load and fewer trips. Less smoke from the kitchen fire is good for health as well.
To learn more, our Community Conservation Manager (Rachel Hemingway) undertook training in Calabar this month to understand how to construct the most efficient stove possible with locally available materials. We are now taking these learnings into the villages of Iko Esai and Agoi.
The knowledge gained will be spread throughout both communities through a series of workshops.
It is hoped that the use of these woodstoves will reduce the communities’ total dependence on firewood by 50%, as well as making the kitchen a healthier environment to be in.
Fuel wood efficiency is expected to have a positive effect on forest conservation, as recent base‐lining indicated that up to 15 kilos of wood a day are used in any one household, meaning that a family of 5 can burn the equivalent of 120 small trees in a year.
The truck will be used to support our project operations at Rhoko, and in particular our 12‐month goals to expand our successful conservation programme there to the neighbouring villages of Iko Ekperem, Agoi, and Owai.
Our present truck in the field is at the end of its life, being in constant need of maintenance and repairs. Consequently our ability to conduct our operations effectively was severely compromised before this donation.
The long‐term nature of this grant is particularly important to us. Our hopes for an expanded area of protected forest beyond the community forest of Iko Esai
rely on a long‐term view, since a change in traditional practices cannot possible be achieved in
timescales measured by months, and the Fund’s recognition of this is notable.
We have just taken possession of a brand‐new 4‐wheel drive Toyota Hilux truck. This incredibly important asset to us is the generous donation of Prins Bernhard Natuurfonds (the Prince Bernhard Fund for Nature).
Prince Bernhard was the father of the current monarch of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix. He helped found WWF (the World Wide Fund for Nature), and was its first President.
In 1994 he endowed his own Foundation, with the mission to ‘support small, preferably local initiatives towards the conservation and wise use of nature and our natural resource base’.
“It is hoped that the use of these woodstoves will reduce the communities’ total dependence on firewood by 50% ”
All new , and ready
for conservation
action!
The first
stove, in use
All photos in this newsletter were taken at CERCOPAN or Iko Esai by staff, volunteers and visitors.
Photo Credits: © Copyright CERCOPAN 2011
Design & Layout by Claire Coulson; Written by Claire Coulson, Rachel Hemingway, Amy Baxter Edited by Claire Coulson
WANT TO BE A PART OF IT?
• Stay in touch with our on‐going programme by bookmarking our home page http://www.cercopan.org/ and our Blog site http://cercopan.wildlifedirect.org/ and joining our Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/cercopan/
• Volunteer for CERCOPAN in either Nigeria or the UK. We offer a range of different programmes so there is something for everyone! Visit our website volunteer section for further details.
• Help CERCOPAN attain corporate funding. If you work for a corporate sponsor who may be interested in funding CERCOPAN please contact [email protected]
• Undertake a sponsored event to raise funds for CERCOPAN. Use the Fundraising Pack on our web site to help you.
• Make a cash donation to CERCOPAN via our website...every little helps!
• Buy a gift for friends or family from the Good Gifts Catalogue (www.goodgifts.org). You can buy a month's supply of fruit for growing CERCOPAN orphan monkeys ‐ called in the catalogue 'A‐peeling Monkeys' for only £20! The price of the gift is passed on to CERCOPAN. So, it is an excellent way of solving your gift problems, and supporting our work! Alternatively visit the CERCOPAN gift shop on our website today.
• Donate useful goods and equipment such as building and fencing materials, veterinary medicines, old laptop computers etc. or services such as printing, blood testing and architectural design.
www.cercopan.org http://cercopan.wildlifedirect.org
http://www.facebook.com/cercopan/