friday 1 may

A slippery future —

After six days in the rainforest I was too exhausted last night to do anything but wash the sweat off, and search for a bite to eat and a beer. I walked into Limbe along the bluff that stares at the sole Cameroonian near-shore oil rig, in the Bay of Guinea, it’s now is flanked by two new exploration ships—the bay will someday be littered with rigs. That’s a rumor everyone seems to hold as certain as the further conversion of rainforest behind the city to palm oil.

As I walked ever closer to that waiting cold beer my thoughts were still tethered to that vast, virtually untouched rainforest I just left—alive with hornbills, turacos, over a dozen primates, including a chimpanzee subspecies found only in those forests west to the Nigerian border and a still mysterious lowland gorilla species—it is seeing its first palm oil bulldozers and chainsaws. Cameroon future is on a dual oil collision course – a slippery future – their nature is not poised to survive it.

2015-2016 Global research and reporting on great apes made possible in part through the generous financial support of the Philadelphia Zoo