By Fred Maingi
The wildlife Industry got a massive relief after five Mountain Bongos were released into the Mawingu Mountain Bongo Sanctuary for rewilding at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy .
This brings total number of the Mountain Bongos released into the sanctuary to 10.
The Local Kenyan rewilding programme, according to stakeholders, is on track to have re- introduced 40-50 fully rewilded Mountain Bongos by 2025.
In addition, Five more critically endangered Mountain Bongos have been successfully released into the Mawingu Mountain Bongo Sanctuary.
In March 2022, the first five mountain bongos to have ever been rewilded were successfully released into the sanctuary. The new release brings the total number of rewilded Bongos in 2022 to 10.
The Bongos were released between Friday 25th November and Thursday 1st December, in an intricate procedure that involved selection, capture and translocation, and post-release monitoring to ensure their safe welfare in this sanctuary.
Rewilding is a process of providing suitable conditions that allow the wildlife originally under human care or degrade to regain their wild instincts (for animals) or for an area to regain its natural vegetation cover through succession. Therefore, translocation is a step to rewild, but does not necessarily mean that animals translocated have been rewilded till they completely regain their wild instincts for free survival.
Since the release of five Bongos in March 2022, the sanctuary has already registered one wild bongo birth providing further incentive that the first animals have fully settled in their new home in the wild since the programme began –
The translocation was overseen by Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (MKWC), in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), who are the government agency supporting the Mountain Bongo Breeding and Rewilding programme.
In line with the Government of Kenya’s Mountain Bongo National Recovery and Action Plan (2019-2023). According to last year’s National Wildlife Census in Kenya, less than 100 Mountain Bongos are left living naturally in the wild.
The International Union of Nature action is taken to address these threats.
The Mountain Bongo is associated with the montane forests in the Kenya highlands and is recorded to have become extinct in Kenya in 1995; critically endangered.
Through the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy’s dedicated conservation work spanning over two decades, Kenya now provides global] leadership in efforts to prevent the extinction of this special antelope. This entails, among other activities, ecosystem restoration work in close
Dr Isaac Lekolool, Head Veterinary Services at KWS, said
“At Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, we have the Bongo program. Currently we are doing the Bongo rehabilitation having set up the Mawingu Mountain Bongo Sanctuary which was officially launched in the year 2022. For this program we are trying to see how to rewild the semi-captive Mountain Bongo which currently exist within MKWC.
“We currently have 10 Bongos within the Sanctuary and our plan is to introduce 5 individuals after every 6 months until we get a good population in the rewilding Sanctuary.*
“We have teams that are well trained, and we have set up camera traps to do remote monitoring so that we don’t interfere with the animal’s natural movements to monitor these animals are doing well after translocation” he noted.
Ends.