by Mike Loomis
Page 4 : Mondjabo Collared
21 Nov 05
We got up early this AM and decided to hike down the Sangha in search of fresh elephant tracks. After about an hour, we found a set of fresh tracks and started following them. We soon caught up with an elephant in dense vegetation. Since we are looking for a female to collar, Theodore tried to get a look at the elephant to see if was a male or female. It turned out to be a male, so we couldn't do a collar. But, amazingly, the elephant was Djembe, whom we collared in 2003 with an Argos GPS collar. The collar is still on the elephant! The collar malfunctioned after a short while, so we didn't get much data. We decided to try to dart the elephant and retrieve the collar. It is unlikely that we will be able to salvage any data, but we can refurbish the collar and redeploy it. Unfortunately, he sensed us and took off before we could get a dart into him.
We continued our search for fresh elephant tracks. The trackers heard elephants and we approached them. There were four elephants in dense vegetation. Michael maneuvered into position to dart a female with a calf. He was able to dart her. The vegetation was very dense and the tracking was very difficult, but the trackers were able to find the anesthetized elephant in about 20 minutes. The trackers redeemed themselves from the other day!
She was in a sternal position, which makes it very difficult for the elephant to breathe. We quickly rolled her on her side. She was also a small elephant. We decided to modify the collar and deploy it on her. It took about 45 minutes to modify the collar, but the elephant was very stable under anesthesia. After the collar was attached, she was reversed and recovered without incident. Theodore wants to name the elephant Mondjabo, after the stream where she was collared. The collaring location is: 2.18240N, 16.05870E.
We headed back to camp and had a small celebration. On the hike back to camp, we saw a large Jamison’s mamba stretched out along a vine across our trail. After all that has gone wrong on this trip, it was nice to finally have some success. We have done all we can here at Djembe, so we prepared to leave for Mambele after a light lunch.
About 15 km from the main road (a total of 48 km from Djembe to the main road) we had a flat tire. The leak was slow, but we did not have any way to refill the tire with air. The tube of the tire that went flat on the way into Djembe a few days ago was not repairable, therefore we had no spare. By this time it was just about 5:00 PM.
We called Zac in Yokadouma on the satellite telephone to tell him our problem and asked him to radio Mambele to send another vehicle with a spare tire to our location. Zac could not get in touch with Mambele by radio. It appeared that we were going to spend the night where we were, without tents or sleeping bags. Chris, our driver, did not want to spend the night in the forest. He decided to fill a tire with vines to give it enough support to make it to the main road. He wrapped vines around the inside of the tire until the tire was full. He then mounted the tire and we set off for the main road.
After about 5 km, the tire was too flat to go on. Chris took the tire off and added as many more vines into the tire as he could cram in. This time we made it to the main road. It was dark when we reached the road. Just as we arrived at the intersection, a logging truck drove up. We flagged the truck down. He did not have any patches, but her did have an air compressor. He filled our leaky tire with air and we headed for an intersection on the main road named PK 27 (27 km from the town of Kika). There is a ranger post at PK 27 and a gate that closes off the road at from 5:00 PM until 6:00 AM, because the road borders Lobeke National Park, and vehicles are not allowed to use the road at night as part of an antipoaching program.
We made it the 12 kilometers to PK 27. There were several trucks parked there waiting until the gate opens in the morning. We asked around and finally found a truck driver with a patch kit who was willing to patch our tube. Once our flat was repaired, we decided to drive to Kika to get the key to the gate from the game guard, who had returned to his home in Kika after he had locked the gate for the night. A few kilometers down the road, we met another WWF vehicle heading back to Mambele from Kika. Fouda was in the vehicle and had the key to the gate. We went through the gate and drove the 60 km from PK 27 to Mambele. On the way, we saw four elephants, a blue duiker, a black-backed duiker and a bush-tailed porcupine in the road. All would have been easy prey for poachers. We finally arrived at Camp Kombo at 10:15 PM. It was a long day.
22 Nov 05
WWF is in the process of moving from Camp Kombo to a new base camp—Camp Mbandjani—on the other side of Mambele. The offices have moved, but housing is still at Camp Kombo. We had breakfast in Mambele and went to Mbandjani. The plan for today is for Zambo, a WWF driver, to drive to Yokadouma this afternoon, and he and Zac will pick me up in Mambele tomorrow morning to go to Bayanga in the Central African Republic. We went to Mambele for lunch. We had fresh water shrimp, a specialty of Mambele. During lunch, it started raining heavily. I went back to Kombo to arrange my equipment for the trip to Bayanga. The rain did not stop until 10:30 PM.
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