First photo taken of Bouvier’s red colobus, a rare monkey found in Congo. Photo by Lieven Devreese courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society
A rare monkey some believed to be extinct was rediscovered and photographed for the first time in the forests of the Republic of Congo by primatologist Lieven Devreese, and the Internet was a contributing factor.
Devreese, a 27-year-old Belgian researcher, relied on Internet crowdfunding to help finance his 1 1/2-month expedition to find the rare monkey, reaching out to the masses on Indiegogo.com for $2,500. He raised $2,567 within a month and set out in February on his quest to find the Bouvier’s red colobus monkey, not knowing if it even existed, according to the Washington Post.
Devreese and fellow researcher Gaël Elie Gnondo Gobolo, aided by local guides, found a group of Bouvier’s red colobus monkeys in the swamp forests along the Bokiba River in the Ntokou-Pikounda National Park.
“Our photos are the world’s first and confirm that the species is not extinct,” Devreese said, according to MongaBay.
“We searched for several days and changed location twice. I was getting desperate and starting to feel frustrated, because the local people will always tell you [the monkeys] are numerous and we are guaranteed to find them. So when we finally found them the last day in the national park I felt a lot of satisfaction.”
First photo taken of Bouvier’s red colobus, a rare monkey found in Congo. Photo by Lieven Devreese courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society
According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, the rare monkey was first described in 1887, and the last unverified sightings of them occurred in the 1970s.
“We’re very pleased indeed that Lieven and Gaël were able to achieve their objective of not only confirming that Bouvier’s red colobus still exists, but also managing to get a very clear close-up picture of a mother and infant,” said Dr. Fiona Maisels of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Thankfully, many of these colobus monkeys live in the recently gazetted national park and are protected from threats such as logging, agriculture, and roads, all of which can lead to increased hunting.”
Devreese told MongaBay that they observed the mother and her infant for more than 20 minutes, proof they are susceptible to hunting.
“At one point she was even closing the eyes,” Devreese said. “Often they just don’t realize people represent a real danger.”
The researchers traversed rivers through some of the remotest forests on Earth, and that transport is expensive as it is not easily accessible, Devreese said. So the funds raised by crowdsourcing, though only a portion of his budget, was very helpful.
“I believe there’s really an ‘art’ of crowdfunding,” he said. “I mean, to do it well [efficiently], you need to think and plan the different steps of getting attention for your project properly. The media is of course a good way to get attention for conservation and your project.”
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