APE IT’S THE ESCAPE!
From Kent to the Congo, we follow 4 very special gorilla brothers on their incredible journey home
THE dashboard clock of the Toyota pickup shows 3am as we bump and swerve our way across the Lesio Louna wildlife reserve in the Republic of the Congo. A lightning storm, initially mesmerising as we climbed above the capital Brazzaville, is now on top of us, turning the dirt track into a quagmire.
The windscreen has steamed up thanks to a broken de-mister so our driver struggles to avoid the endless potholes, and we are thrown around like rag-dolls. But however uncomfortable I feel, there’s another passenger behind me who’s even more annoyed – as he informs us at regular intervals by shrieking and thumping his fists on his cage. Fubu is a 25st western lowland gorilla, and although he doesn’t know it yet, he’s en route to freedom, in convoy along with three half-brothers – Kouyou, Kebu and silverback Kangu.
All were born and bred at The Aspinall Foundation’s Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent, and its sister sanctuary Port Lympne, owned by casino owner and conservationist Damian Aspinall.
Aged between 14 and 18, these apes have endured a 40-hour road, rail and air journey to a 37-acre peninsula in an oxbow lake off the Louna river. It’s fenced off from a wider reserve, which is home to 35 other endangered western lowland gorillas, all reintroduced by The Aspinall Foundation.
Aspinall, 57 and his wife Victoria, 30, watch nervously as the crates are hauled from river launches by a dozen men using steel poles, then heaved up a steep mud bank.
Fubu is the first to be released – he bounds through the cage tunnel to a round of applause. His brothers quickly follow and, after getting their bearings, they saunter off to explore. They will remain in the enclosure for up to two years where they will be monitored and intermittently fed before they are ready for the reserve proper.
Damian Aspinall is proud of the Foundation’s record on the reintroduction of endangered species. Later this year they will pass the 100 mark in reintroduced primates. Three years ago, several female members of a reintroduced group of gorillas were apparently killed by a rogue male. But he says he has learned from that experience, and is determined to press on with these four. ‘Their father, Kifu, is at Howletts, and I would go in his enclosure every week,’ says Aspinall. ‘I used to promise him, “One day I’m going to get your boys back home.” ’
On our return to the reserve HQ, an orphaned baby gorilla, Loukoléla, aged two, plays with a delighted Victoria. When he has reached the size of his four new neighbours, he too will be reintroduced to the wild. Visit aspinallfoundation.org to donate