Huge Palestian summer weddings undo gains made during lockdown
About 50 cameras were set up in 2012, and multiple images have been captured in Cameroon’s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary and in Nigeria’s Mbe Mountains community forest and Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary.
But Cross River gorillas are notoriously difficult to capture together on camera, and no images had captured multiple infants.
An alliance of nine local communities, the Conservation Association of the Mbe Mountains, has been working with the Wildlife Conservation Society since the mid-1990s to help protect the Cross River gorillas. Since that time, there have been no recorded deaths in Nigeria, the society said.
The gorillas at one point had been thought to be extinct, according to the society’s Nigeria country director, Andrew Dunn.
“It’s a big success story that shows communities can protect their wildlife,” he said.
Cross River gorillas have been threatened for decades primarily by hunting, but also by loss of habitat. The subspecies was “rediscovered” in the late 1980s.
About 100 Cross River gorillas have since been recorded in Nigeria’s Cross River State and about 200 in Cameroon in a trans-border region of about 12 000 square kilometres.
A team of about 16 eco-guards have been recruited from surrounding communities to patrol and protect the gorillas and other wildlife, Dunn said.
BY THE END of May, the Palestinian Authority (PA) appeared to have quashed a coronavirus outbreak in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with around 400 confirmed cases and just two fatalities, following a nearly threemonth lockdown.
Then the wedding invitations went out. Over the past few weeks, infections have rocketed, with more than 4 000 new cases and an additional 15 deaths. Authorities blame the surge on widespread neglect of physical distancing and mask-wearing and on the summer wedding season.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told a cabinet meeting on Monday that 82% of cases in the West Bank were linked to weddings and funerals, saying that such large public gatherings must stop or security forces would start breaking them up.
The Palestinian Authority imposed a five-day lockdown on Friday, forcing nearly all businesses to close and restricting travel between towns and cities. It has renewed it for another five days on Tuesday.
The epicentre of the outbreak is in Hebron, the largest Palestinian city and a commercial hub. It accounts for around 75% of all active cases and more than two-thirds of all deaths, says Ali Abed Rabu, a Health Ministry official.
A major outbreak could overwhelm the Palestinian health sector, which has just 350 ventilators for a population of more than 2.5 million people.
Hebron’s mayor, Tayseer Abu Snaineh, points to other potential vectors, including the fact that large numbers of workers and merchants in Hebron travel back and forth from Israel, he said the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has tried to prevent large gatherings.
But with the PA barred from the area and the Israeli military focused on securing the settlements, Abu Snaineh said there is no authority to impose virus restrictions. As a result, residents have held large weddings and other gatherings.
“People celebrate, hug each other and eat together in this area with no restrictions,” he said.
The mayor said ultra-conservative Muslims have also defied restrictions in order to pray in mosques. One group, known as Hezb al-Tahrir, has openly called on people to defy restrictions on group prayers, accusing the PA of “using coronavirus as a pretext to fight Islam”.
Palestinian