Born Free

Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Feb 02 2009 | By: bornfree

You may remember one of our blogs about a small baby Impala (antelope), named Mitambo.  He was rescued by the Wildlife Centre after we were notified by the National Parks of Malawi that he had been injured.  Our vet, Wendy, went immediately to fetch him for treatment.

When Mitambo was brought to the centre his leg was badly injured.  There were two breaks in his right front leg, one even going through his skin.  Wendy worked hard to keep Mitambo alive with a cast that allowed access to his wounds for routine checks while slowly nursing him back to solids, but we are sad to report that Mitambo did not survive.

It is always nice to read about happy endings to our rescue stories – we love happy endings – but it is a reality that some animals will not survive.  We believe Mitambo’s leg was injured by a poacher’s trap and unfortunately poaching and the illegal pet trade are a significant problem in Malawi. 

The Wildlife Centre itself is a great place for the rescued animals, but the centre extends beyond that by educating visitors.  Children and adults learn about poaching, illegal pet trade, deforestation, and conservation while on tours of the centre.  We believe these problems can be combated through education.

Please send your donations to help our continuing efforts in educating the public about the dangers threatening wildlife on a daily basis.

Tags: impala, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, Malawi, poaching

4 responses so far

Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Jan 15 2009 | By: bornfree

Happy New Year everyone!!

Well we have had an exciting and busy time this last month. We are proud to announce that we had our first official release of animals that we have rescued and rehabilitated. It was an exciting and emotional day for all concerned.

After a year of planning and co-ordinating with National Parks of Malawi we found a suitable site in Kasungu National Park in central Malawi on Sunday 6th December, the Wildlife Centre rounded up Jack’s troop into their travel boxes.  The transfer up to Kasungu was in fact delayed by 24 hours, it appeared that Jack (the troop’s alpha male) was not so happy about the whole move and refused to come into the holding area where he could be darted and sedated.  He was however eventually darted and boxed up.  After just five hours on the road Jack’s troop was at the release site in Kasungu National Park, a beautiful spot along the river, where Jack and his family were transferred into a temporary holding area where they remained for a week to give them time to settle into their new environment.  The troop was now one step closer to freedom!

Then on Saturday 13th December, a team of us from the Wildlife Centre opened the gates and Jack and his family were released back to the wild. The final step that saw them returned home, free and wild. It was an emotional morning for the team,  watching the baboons take their first steps out of the gates of the holding area, especially for those who had cared for these animals and nursed some of them back to health, it was wonderful to see them free, chasing butterflies and climbing trees.

Our release research team headed up by Andrea will stay up at the park and track and check on the baboons for the next year. Three of the troop have been fitted with radio collars so tracking is easy.

Andrea is coming to town this week and will give us an update on how the baboons are doing….. keep watching this space!!

The release site where the baboons stayed for a week to acclimatise.

Tags: animal release, baboon, bushmeat, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, Malawi, rehabilitation

3 responses so far

Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Nov 24 2008 | By: bornfree

Hello blogsters.

Well, the Olive baboons are settling in well and are coming close to the end of their quarantine period. We have, however, been able to introduce one of the pairs named Jack and Jill (we had two pairs and a group of four in three separate night rooms) into the night room with the group of four and things went very well. So, now these six baboons can move around the two night rooms and stretch their legs a bit more, so to speak. We had expected a bit of a stand-off with the two larger males but they got on fine. It was two of the females who were a bit antsy but they soon sorted things out and now the group make an impressive bunch. It is our plan to eventually introduce them to the other pair and then all eight of them can live as one large troop.

On a different note let me introduce you to our latest rescues. They are two tiny, tiny bush babies. One of our education team was taking a tour group around the Centre when suddenly something fell out of a tree just outside our perimeter fence. On inspection it was identified as an adult bush baby. A group of children had been chasing her and she had lost her footing and fallen, probably breaking her neck. The children ran away at this point when we intervened but shortly afterwards we heard the cries of her babies looking for her. They were coming down from the tree tops straight into danger. Luckily for them our team were there to take them in. They are so small they were still suckling. So out came our collection of small dolls’ bottles (yes, dolls!) - human baby bottles are too big!

The two babies, now called Barack and Obama (no less!) are being cared for night and day, thanks to our team of carers and volunteers and are slowly building up their body weight and are just starting to climb out of their box and start exploring the world.

Bush babies, mostly nocturnal, are a little similar to humans in that they need to stay with their parents for up to nearly a year before they are strong and wise enough to set off on their own, so you can imagine how much time and care that will be needed to help these two little chaps find their feet in the world.

Once again, please keep you donations coming, every little bit helps us to help rescued babies like these.  For more information you can visit our website at http://www.lilongwewildlife.org/.

 Many thanks, Lee

Tags: bush baby, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, olive baboon, rescue

One response so far

Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Aug 25 2008 | By: bornfree

There is a leopard basking in the early morning Malawian Sun just fifty metres away, its camouflage is fantastic with only its tail giving its position away. At night, laughing hyenas can be heard, their tracks from the previous night criss-cross the path in front of me. A troop of yellow baboons stretches its legs nearby. The remarkable thing is that I am not in a national park; I am in the capital city of Malawi, at the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

The Lilongwe wildlife centre is a wildlife rehabilitation and rescue centre, combined with a large wilderness zone, providing an oasis right in the centre of the city for wildlife that has been rescued, confiscated or relocated from poachers, the illegal pet trade, zoos and other organisations. The centre provides several functions from rehabilitation to release combined with education programmes, for all levels and ages, about how people and wildlife are undeniably linked. For this reason the centre is being developed as a “People and Wildlife” centre, where key messages aim to reduce poaching and trading while raising an appreciation, and ultimately an understanding, of the natural world through community support, co-operation and education.

 Malawi is a beautiful country with exceptionally friendly people and although I have only been here for a few weeks, it already feels like home. As the new Education Manager, it is my role to expand on the fantastic work of the small but dedicated education team, in making sure that the Malawian public and tourists alike have the opportunity to find out how wildlife and sustainability can benefit the future development of Malawi. 

For the last few days I have been familiarising myself with the huge scale of the centre, the existing education and community outreach programmes and the whole team, the majority of which are Malawian. Employment, and more importantly support, of local community staff is essential in any People and Wildlife initiative so it is fantastic to see this in practice and working so well. It is now a case of adding to the existing educational programmes and facilities in order to make sure that the educational activities generate enough income to ideally make a profit which can be put straight back into the vital work of the centre.

That’s all for now, as I’m off to radio track one of our newly released animals, a genet by the name of J.D. (it looks like a cross between a ferret, a cat and a raccoon!) which has been released into the large protected wilderness zone around the centre. It’s one of many success stories to come thanks to the support of the Born Free Foundation and our other supporters.

Cheerio
Bruce – Education Manager at the LLWC

Tags: education, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, Malawi

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Category: Lilongwe Wildlife Centre | Date: Aug 05 2008 | By: bornfree

Hello, today’s blog is a bit different in that it has been written by someone who brought a rescued baboon to our attention at Lilongwe Wildlife Centre. This is a typical story for many wild animals in Malawi:

Stumpy was first seen on the 10th of July at a market in a village on the Lunzu Road. He was kept on a short rope, tied around his neck to a pole with no shelter. Although there were lots of vegetables for sale around him he was given little food and was under nourished. It seemed all in a day’s entertainment for kids to throw stones at him, confident that he could not escape and cause them any harm.

Stumpy was confiscated from his owner the next day by Parks and Wildlife. After explaining to his ‘owner’ the village butcher, that it was illegal to keep a baboon as a pet he willingly gave Stumpy over to them.

Despite having most of his teeth removed and only having one arm Stumpy is still in good spirits. Thankfully we now have the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre as previously there really wasn’t a facility to accept so many of the injured or orphaned animals like Stumpy.

Stumpy will spend the next month in quarantine, then he will move into a larger enclosure and be introduced to a troop of other orphaned baboons where he will be able to live a more normal life and perhaps one day be released back into the wild.

Thank you to all the staff and Volunteers at Lilongwe Wildlife Centre for all there hard work at dedication to the animals. Without a facility like this Stumpy’s story would not have such a happy ending…..

Bev Trataris

Please keep your donations coming in so that we can continue to help animals like Stumpy. Just $20 will help us to feed someone like Stumpy for a week.

You can Subscribe to Born Free Wildlife Direct blog by Email here

Tags: baboon, Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, Malawi, Stumpy

5 responses so far