Victory for IPPL: "Taiping Four" Gorillas Return to Cameroon!
Shirley McGreal, IPPL Founder
On 30 November 2007, the smuggled gorillas whom IPPL had dubbed the "Taiping Four" more than five years earlier finally returned to their native country of Cameroon. The three females and one male (named Tinu, Izan, Oyin, and Abbey) had been smuggled via Nigeria and South Africa to Malaysia's Taiping Zoo on falsified documents in January 2002, as IPPL discovered two months later and quickly made public. Now, after years of protests and negotiations, the four animals, infants no more, but 200-pound sub-adults, have finally been flown from their interim home at South Africa's Pretoria Zoo (thanks to Kenya Airways, which transported the animals free of charge) back to their Cameroonian homeland. The gorillas have already been transferred to the Limbe Wildlife Centre, a well-known wildlife sanctuary that IPPL has helped fund since 1995 (in fact, IPPL donated all proceeds from our 2006 fall fundraising drive, totaling $62,000, to the facility). At Limbe, the Taiping Four will be integrated with an existing social group of 11 gorillas, many of whom were also rescued from illegal trade.
History of the Taiping Four
At the IPPL Members' conference in March 2002, a speaker from Asia told me that the Taiping Zoo, Malaysia, had recently obtained four young gorillas on the international black market. He showed me photos of two of the animal dealers involved and gave me a business card for a company called NigerCom Solutions, based in Malaysia, that had supplied the animals.
That was all we had, but we swung into action as we had done in many other primate smuggling cases, the most famous being the "Bangkok Six" orangutan case, which landed smugglers from the U.S. and several other nations in prison.
IPPL Board member Dianne Taylor-Snow, who was traveling in Asia at the time, verified the presence of the gorillas at Taiping Zoo. I contacted Malaysian wildlife authorities, who confirmed that four gorillas had entered the country with Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) import permits from the government of Malaysia. We were told that import permits for two more gorillas had also been issued but that these additional permits had been cancelled pending an investigation of the four gorillas already at Taiping Zoo (see April 2002 news).
The name of the "NigerCom" company suggested that the animals had originated in Nigeria, at that time a major center of illegal wildlife trafficking. So I contacted a colleague in Nigeria who was able to obtain the export and shipping documents (no easy feat). These showed that the gorillas had traveled on export papers claiming that they had been captive-born at Ibadan Zoo and that South African Airways had carried the shipment.
Our colleague and an Associated Press reporter went to Ibadan and found that there was only one adult gorilla there�an elderly female living alone. So the zoo was not running a "Baby Gorilla Factory" but a "Baby Gorilla Laundry" through which wild-caught animals reached Ibadan Zoo with no export papers but left on false "captive-born" documents (you can see some examples of these at August 2002 news).
Now we knew the names of the dealers and the itinerary. Colleagues in South Africa managed to obtain the documents on file at Johannesburg Airport. They showed that South Africa had issued permits allowing the clearly smuggled animals to pass through the country. IPPL members sent letters of protest to authorities in Nigeria, South Africa, and Malaysia. The issue received wide press coverage.
The case was further discussed at the Conference of the Parties to CITES held in Santiago, Chile, in November 2002. At this meeting, Nigeria's Minister of State for the Environment, Dr. Imeh Okopido, called for the gorillas to be sent to Cameroon (April 2003 news).
In late 2002, the Government of Malaysia announced it would confiscate the gorillas (http://www.ippl.org/01-03-09.html), but the authorities in fact allowed the Taiping Zoo keep them for almost a year and a half, until they were finally shipped�not back to their Cameroonian homeland, but to Pretoria Zoo, South Africa, in April 2004. The choice of destination caused an international furor, and the New York Times covered the story in May 2005.
Meanwhile, Minister Okopido of Nigeria had become a great ally in the gorillas' cause and stuck to his promise to establish a Commission of Enquiry into how the animals had left Nigeria (December 2003 news). In addition, South African groups kept up the pressure to have the gorillas sent back to Cameroon, including the Wildlife Action Group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and, most importantly, the Cameroon-based Last Great Ape Organization, in coordination with the Government of Cameroon, which spent years in negotiations for the animals' return. Now all this hard work has finally paid off!
Thank You to Everyone Who Helped Bring the Taiping Four Home!
Thank you to all of IPPL's supporters and allies who worked on this case from the very beginning; writing letters, sending postcards, and offering donations to fund our work on behalf of trafficked primates around the world. Thanks to everyone, our friends in the U.S. and overseas, whose steady support has ensured the ultimate success of our Taiping Four investigation and campaign.
The Taiping Four gorillas, in their crates, safely emerge from their Kenya Airways flight at Douala International Airport, Cameroon.
The Taiping Four crates are being unloaded.
A youth group with signs and banners turns out to welcome the returning gorillas.
One of the Taiping Four gorillas, safe back home in Cameroon, at the Limbe Wildlife Centre.
All photos Courtesy The Last Great Ape Organization
