by Mike Loomis
June 23, 2010
We were up at 3:30 in the morning today and on the road by 4:00AM. We drove two hours to a new area of Mount Cameroon. Our guide felt confident that we would find elephants in this area.
However, not soon after we got out of our vehicle, a very bad rain storm came up. For the next hour, the rain poured down and the wind blew very hard. We became concerned that trees might fall over onto us, so we decided to leave the forest and return to our vehicle. As we walked back to the vehicle, tree branches and small trees crashed down onto the trail.
After the storm calmed down a bit, we went back into the forest and found a lot of elephant signs. Unfortunately, the signs were all from three to four days ago, and the elephants would now be too far away for us to track.
We decided to leave the area and head back to our camp. Believe it or not, the rain and the wind (and the altitude) combined to make us all quite cold. Even though I normally hike without raingear, I chose today to put on a poncho on my way out of the forest.
Since we didn't find any useful tracks today, we have decided to leave Mount Cameroon and head back to Limbe. From Limbe, we'll go back to Korup National Park, this time focusing on the northern end of the park.
We remain optimistic about our chances in Korup—in fact, we're going to take two collars with us in the hopes that we'll collar more than one animal in the park. However, we also realized that we might not be able to work in some of these areas during rainy season. The rain has seemed never-ending, and I don't know what we would've done without the community center roof over our heads. The rain also made hiking and elephant traffic very difficult.
Our local guides here in Mount Cameroon are very good, and have told us that they know where there are some permanent water holes on the mountain. That means that we may be able to return in the dry season—which runs from December through February, more or less—and collar an animal on the mountain then.
About the author:Dr. Mike Loomis is Chief Veterinarian at the North Carolina Zoological Park.
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