Kenya’s Mountain Bongo Rewilding Program Offers Hope for Survival of This Critically Endangered Species

A small victory for wildlife conservation in Kenya! Five mountain bongos have recently been released into a 776-acre (314-hectare) Mawingu mountain bongo sanctuary. The critically endangered forest antelope is endemic to the lush forests of Mount Kenya, Mau, Eburu, and Aberdares. Since the 1950s, its numbers have been dwindling due to wildlife trade, poaching, loss of habitat, and the rinderpest, and less than 100 mountain bongos can be found in the wild today.

Source: Tropical Conservation Institute/YouTube

Paul Reillo, Director of the Tropical Conservation Institute and founding director of the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation (RSCF), hopes that by reintroducing mountain bongos to the wild, the entire ecosystem will benefit. “By focusing on those species that can catalyze and leverage protection of ecosystems, we find an effective real-time, forward-thinking way to save a lot more than just those species,” Reillo explains.

The mountain bongo Conservation efforts reached new levels of urgency in 2011 when certain extinction was predicted by 2025. A small number of mountain bongos that were being kept at U.S. zoos were repatriated to Kenya in 2004, where the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (MKWC) and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) have been running breeding programs ever since.

While there is cause for cautious optimism, wildlife conservation in Africa can be tenuous. In February of this year, South Africa granted permits to hunt 10 black rhinos, 10 leopards, and 150 elephants. The black rhino is still a critically endangered species, yet the modest increase in its numbers has convinced the South African government that annual hunting is justified.

Hunting big game has been illegal in Kenya since 1977, but illegal logging and humans encroaching on the mountain bongo’s land continue to threaten the antelope’s habitat. And with the costs tied to rewilding an entire species, local governments may not always be prepared to continue to take the necessary steps. “When they reach a point where we must come in to assist them to recover, the price we will pay in terms of financial resources, human resources is very, very big and sometimes we are not ready to pay that price,” Robert Aruho, Head of Conservancy at the (MKWC) told Africa News.

In 2019, the government announced a plan to achieve a population of 750 mountain bongos in Kenya by 2050. And if the plan continues to find Support, the Kenyan Highlands have a chance of recovery. Sign this petition to save African wildlife

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