One notable example of this being put into practice is taking place in Uganda, where the screening of wildlife and great ape documentaries are helping to raise awareness of the importance of safeguarding gorillas and the forests they live in.

To make this project come to life, The Gorilla Organization partnered with the Great Apes Film Initiative (GAFI) back in 2006. Then, in November 2010 the film screenings were given a fun and innovative twist thanks to the development of a pedal-powered cinema: an adapted bicycle that, when pedalled, produces enough power to screen films.

For the full article, click here.

Apart from being home to around a third of the world’s critically endangered mountain gorillas, Virunga is probably the biologically diverse National Park in Africa and is a ‘World Heritage Site, in Danger’. The rangers of Virunga work tirelessly to protect the wildlife of Virunga and are committed to finding means to raise awareness and understanding amongst the youngsters that live in and around the Park.

The communities living around Virunga have no electricity and the children, nor their extended families, will have ever seen a film. The pedal powered cinema is predicted to screen conservation films to over 75,000 children in over 100 of these remote schools during it’s first year alone. The rangers aim to follow up these screenings with talks and guided educational sessions throughout Virunga NP, Africa’s oldest National Park. The number of extended family members who crowd around to take a look at the films through windows and doors would numbers in the 100′s of thousands over time.

Virunga will be making their own specific films focusing on the issues affecting the future of the Park such as poaching and the illegal charcoal trade. The pedal powered cinema provides the perfect means to take positive conservation messages out to remote and isolated communities. It’s also fun and interactive, with children hopping on and off the bike that powers the screenings.

From having no effective means to communicate with the thousands of children and communities of Virunga, the rangers now have a simple, fun and very practical means of encouraging a much increased awareness and understanding of Virunga. That can only lead to much better informed and caring communities who understand that protecting the Parks habitats and wildlife will bring benefits to them both now aqnd long into the future.

After the first film screening at Rumangabo school (with 721 children) the pedal powered cinema was described by Park staff as ‘an awesome piece of kit’. A better endorsement would be hard to find……

Linda Nunn

Chair, Gearing Up 4 Gorillas

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Emmanuel de Merode, Chief Warden, is developing an environmental education project to be delivered throughout VNP along with Head of Communications, Francesco de Lisi.

The pedal powered cinema will be an integral part of delivering that programme through showing films / videos in schools and local communities. A generous sponsor, Animal Friends Insurance, has offered to purchase the cinema for Gearing Up 4 Gorillas (G4G) to deliver to Virunga. Elaine Fairfax, Managing Director, has very kindly made donations towards the work of G4G on previous occasions.

During the first half of 2011, there have been several ranger deaths from gun attacks by militia groups in the Park. Emmanuel will focus on promoting Virungas conservation messages to local communities and schools, together with the benefits conservation can bring to them, to counteract those elements who seek to destroy the Park for their own ends.

Emmanuel estimates using the cinema in at least 3 schools per week; reaching around 1,500 children a month and over 75,000 per annum. Screenings within local villages will considerably increase the number of people to benefit from the cinema. G4G are currently working on raising £6,000 to fund two environmental education staff for Virunga for a year, to enable this work to be initiated as soon as possible, after the cinema is delivered. Two events in Dorset, (a music event in September and an auction in October) will hopefully give a good boost to the fundraising effort. After showcasing the cinema at the events and through the media, it is planned to deliver the cinema to VNP some time in November. Madelaind Westwood of GAFI and G4G may well also be filming the cinemas arrival and use in Virunga, as interest in the project has been shown by national media.

Linda Nunn
Chair, G4G

With colleagues from The Gorilla Organisation, Madelaine travelled to remote areas of Southern Uganda, close to one of the remaining habitats of the mountain gorilla. In this first stage, the team reached nearly 14,000 people – showing them films about the lives of gorillas. The awareness raised is a vital step in connecting the local human population with the issues related to the conservation of these apes.

These villages would have been all but inaccessible to a roadshow that used traditional transport and power. However, the pedal-power model means that communities in areas that are without electricity and difficult to access by road are able to gather in large numbers and watch a film – sometimes for the first time. And they could even take it in turns to provide the power! You can see amazing footage from the roadshow on this YouTube clip: The Bike that helps save the gorilla.

Villagers in Uganda, by Madelaine Westwood

Wild chimpanzees are learning how to outwit human hunters.

Across Africa, people often lay snare traps to catch bushmeat, killing or injuring chimps and other wildlife.

But a few chimps living in the rainforests of Guinea have learnt to recognise these snare traps laid by human hunters, researchers have found.

More astonishing, the chimps actively seek out and intentionally deactivate the traps, setting them off without being harmed.

The discovery was serendipitously made by primatologists Mr Gaku Ohashi and Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa who were following chimps living in Bossou, Guinea to study the apes’ social behaviour.

SNARES: A SPECIAL REPORT

Read a BBC special report into how bushmeat snares impact chimpanzees
Learn more about chimpanzees

Snare injuries to chimps are reported at many sites across east and west Africa where chimps are studied, with many animals dying in the traps.

However, very few snares injuries have been reported among chimps studied at Bossou, which is unusual as the chimps live close to human settlements and snares are commonly laid in the area.

Now primatologists know why.

While researching the chimps, Mr Ohashi and Prof Matsuzawa, of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan, observed five male chimps, both juvenile and adult, attempting to break and deactivate snares.

On two occasions witnessed, the chimps successfully deactivated the traps set for them.

Wire noose

A typical snare, for example one made by the Manon people of Bossou, consists of a loop of iron wire connected by a vine rope to an arched stick, often a sapling.

On six separate occasions, chimps attempted to deactivate the traps

The sapling puts tension into the rope and once an animal passes through the wire loop, the trap is sprung and the sapling pulls it tight, around the neck or leg of an animal.

Such traps cause indiscriminate damage, ensnaring any and all animals that come into contact with them.

But male Bossou chimps have worked out how to outwit the hunters and deactivate the traps.

“They seemed to know which parts of the snares are dangerous and which are not,” Mr Ohashi told the BBC.

A rat caught in a snare is found by researchers

In the journal Primates, the researchers describe six separate cases where chimps were observed trying to deactivate snares.

Mostly, the chimps grasped the snare stick with their hands, shaking it violently until the trap broke.

Sometimes a chimp lightly knocked the sapling that holds the snare, before grasping it to break the trap.

But in all cases, they avoided touching the dangerous part, the wire loop.

In the video above, chimp can be seen seeking out and inspecting snares, without breaking them.

Life-saving skills

“We were surprised when we found this behaviour,” says Mr Ohashi.

“This is the first report of chimpanzees breaking snares without injury.”

The chimps’ actions may also reveal something important about how chimps learn.

Often, chimps acquire new talents by trial and error.

For example, when trying to crack nuts, they might strike one stone onto an anvil stone and miss the nuts all together. Or they might use their hands to strike the nut, which is ineffective.

But the Bossou chips couldn’t have learned how to deactivate the snares this way, as one mistake could be fatal.

“The observations indicate that chimpanzees can learn some manners without trial and error,” says Mr Ohashi.

The researchers speculate that the chimps may have learnt how the snares work by observing them over time, and this information has been passed down generations.

During one case, a juvenile male watched an adult male deactivate a snare, before then moving in to handle it once it was safe.

The researchers caution that snares remain a significant threat to wild chimps, and they are leading conservation efforts to scan the forest for the traps and remove them.

They also say that chimps in other regions do not appear so far to have also learnt how to outwit human hunters in this way.

Prestigious Award Will Fund Research into Roadshow Effectiveness

GAFI's Director, Madelaine Westwood

GAFI is delighted to announce that Madelaine Westwood, GAFI’s director, has been awarded a scholarship from the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation.

These scholarships are awarded anually to “outstanding individuals of great potential or proven excellence who need financial support to undertake creative or original work of intellectual, scientific, artistic, social or environmental value and to musicians for advanced training.”

The scholarship money will enable Madelaine to undertake research that will refine the effectiveness of using film for conservation education, not just for GAFI’s projects, but for NGO’s working throughout the world.

GAFI’s film roadshows have reached a huge audience in Indonesia and Africa, connecting local people to the issues related to the apes they share their environment with.  Now this research will help us to improve the effectiveness of the conservation messages that the films deliver.

Over the course of the next three years, Madelaine will use questionnaire data from film roadshows run by GAFI in conjuction with the Gorilla Organization (in Uganda) and the Sumatran Orangutan Society (in Sumatra) to establish criteria for creating the most effective film screening programmes.

A set of guidelines will be published for the benefit of all NGO’s that use films and media in education and outreach and for educational establishments.

The research will also lead to the creation and distribution of new films that match the criteria defined in these new guidelines.  Ngo partners will collaborate on the issues raised in each film and local communities will be invited to participate in the creation and content of the film.

The award of this scholarship is not only a deserved recognition of Madelaine’s contribution to conservation, but it will help GAFI to rectify the absence of  worldwide guidelines to support conservation education screenings and the creation of new conservation films to local communities.

Unlocking the secrets of gorillas to local communities

GAFI’s work to bring awareness of mountain gorillas to human populations in Uganda has received a huge boost. The pedal-powered roadshow project has received full funding with €10,000 awarded from the Van Tienhoven Foundation for International Nature Protection with a further €10,000 donated by a donor in the USA.

Since 2006, the Gorilla Organization (GO) has taken GAFI films to 176 schools in two districts of Uganda; Kabale and Kisoro. These districts are bordered by the last two habitats of the Critically Endangered mountain gorilla; the Virunga Volcanoes and the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

In 2008, GAFI was introduced to the innovative idea of the Pedal Powered Cinema. This initiative aims to minimise the resources and access problems, previously experienced in remote communities. Bicycles will be used to substitute ever-increasing fuel-costs needed by large vehicles and the bicycles can reach remote places that cannot be reached by car.

The current programme aims to:

• Facilitate an estimated 288 film screenings in 12 months, thus engaging an estimated 43,200 school students and 14,400 community members.
• Reach remote schools and isolated communities who live alongside great ape habitats, ensuring greater impact on mountain gorilla conservation.
• Bring together communities and provide a platform to voice their conservation concerns, to enhance local governance.

GAFI would like to offer heartfelt thanks to the Van Tienhoven Foundation and our US donor for enabling us to further our work in Uganda.

If you would like to support GAFI to carry out similar projects around the world, we would welcome any donations you are able to give.

At this year’s Bristol Festival of Nature, GAFI and the Ape Alliance seized a great opportunity to raise awareness of ape conservation and the profile our work.

Sharing a stand, we were very busy running an ape colouring/drawing competition for children, whilst volunteers, dressed as gorillas and orangutans, rode electric scooters loaned for the event from our sponsor http://www.i-scoot.co.uk/.  We were also able to raise funds through bucket collections for the GAFI Ugandan Pedal Power Cinema Project.

Everyone at the festival and many more in South West England would have struggled to miss us as we were interviewed live on the Big Screen in Millenium Square at the festival and featured on BBC Points West.  Many thanks to everyone who helped out with the festival.