Night after night, our IBREAM researchers spent time in the dense, dark rainforest of Ivory Coast: all in the hopes of seeing a wild pygmy hippo in real life. This is incredible difficult and only a hand full of people have up to now managed to get a glimpse of this secretive endangered species, with only a few thousand animals still alive. As fate would have it, on the very last night our team encountered, and filmed with a night camera, not one, but TWO pygmy hippos! A mother and her calf. They were grazing and were even seen taking a dip in the water…
Why does this make us so excited? IBREAM (Institute for Breeding Rare and Endangered African Mammals), under the direction of Associate Professor Monique Paris, has been working to protect the pygmy hippo since 2010. Ever since, Monique build a motivated team and successes followed…the first images of the pygmy hippo on trap cameras in West Africa, and a few years back the team stepped up using a conservation detection dog to help locate their whereabouts. But seeing this elusive animal in real life has proven to be virtually impossible… until now! Our IBREAM team members were spectacularly rewarded with the beautiful presence of these two magnificent pygmy hippos. They were able to observe and film them for more than 30 minutes: something our team will never forget…and has provided unique footage we can share with the world.
And this is something that gives us hope to save the pygmy hippo from extinction. IBREAM went to the remote rainforest, Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast with one clear goal: testing our pygmy hippo collar. It has been a goal of IBREAM and Rotterdam Zoo for quite some time to be able to track pygmy hippos in the wild. But using a collar in the dense rainforest comes with its challenges: how will the collar react to such a vastly different and demanding environment compared to what we are used to in the Netherlands?
Thus, our Dutch IBREAM team members (Mark van Heukelum and Jop Kempkes) together with our IBREAM/CSRS (Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques) team members in Ivory Coast (Dr Bogui Bandama Elie, Dr Hermann Digbeu, and Innocent Toile) went on expedition to test the collar in Taï National Park, home of the pygmy hippo. And successfully so! The collar appears to respond very well in this remote and challenging environment, making us hopeful for a future in which we will be able to collar a wild pygmy hippo.
All of this gives us hope in our mission to protect the pygmy hippo from extinction – a goal we have been pursuing together with our big partner Rotterdam Zoo, and OIPR (The Ivorian Office of Parks and Reserves), Stichting Wildlife (ZooParc Overloon), Givskud Zoo – Zootopia, Zoo Antwerpen, Toronto Zoo, ParkenZoo, and ZPOT for quite some time now. We would also like to thank the OIPR (The Ivorian Office of Parks and Reserves) for granting us access to Taï National Park and for their support since the beginning of this project. We are incredibly proud to have such amazing partners and sponsors who care about the pygmy hippo as much as we do since the pygmy hippo is often overlooked.
Images of pygmy hippo mother and calf, made in Taï National Park (all images belong to IBREAM):
Our team in Taï National Park, searching for the wild pygmy hippos:
