Groups of female and baby bongo, for example, often live for weeks on less than an acre (0.4 hectare) of land, while males roam from group to group, said Nigel Carnelley, a local conservationist who has worked with Kenya's Bongo Surveillance Project.
Carnelly said he had learned that bongo still lived in Eburu only in 2003, and pictures from a camera trap suggest the presence of another 20 to 30—in addition to the 20 or so just found—for a total of about 50 in Eburu Forest.
Some experts suggest that that estimate is too high. So the next step, if funding can be obtained, will be to confirm those numbers with more camera traps, dung samples, and tracking on foot.
Bringing Back the Bongo
Carnelley's efforts are part of wider work in Kenya to restore the bongo.
Mount Kenya is the location of a planned program to release bongo that were born and raised in captivity in the United States. Eighteen bongo were returned to the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy in 2004, but the descendants have yet to be released into the wild.
Mike Prettejohn, who was born in Kenya and hunted bongo in his youth, now leads the Bongo Surveillance Project. He's trying to cement a deal with the Kenya Wildlife Service that would start a patrol group to stop poachers from attacking the bongo.
Already the wildlife service has launched the National Bongo Conservation Task Force to devose a plan for protecting the bongo from its chief threats: habitat destruction and poachers, who hunt with guns and dogs.
"They are quite clever at keeping alive but nevertheless with dogs and the amount of pressure they are under, the mountain bongo in the wild will be finished within 50 years at the most," Prettejohn said.
Yet such steep, inaccessible forest—which generally works in the bongos favor by keeping humans away—is hard to monitor. Determined poachers can operate with little fear of being caught.
"The terrain in question is difficult for any force to adequately control," said Lyndon Estes, a research associate with the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation, who has studied the bongo.
"You can be 100 meters [110 yards] away from somebody up in those forests and possibly not even be aware of them."
The Wild vs. Woodcutting
In many ways, the plight of the bongo represents the conflicts wracking Kenya today.
Massive population growth is putting pressure on some of Kenya's most precious wild spaces, as people come looking for food and fuel for Kenya's ubiquitous charcoal-burning cooking stoves.
In particular, the woodcutters are destroying the forest habitat in Eburu.
Approached by strangers in the woods late last year, some cutters scattered, while others continued chopping trees nonchalantly.
"I'm here because I'm poor and I have no other way to make money," said woodcutter Stephen Njoroge, standing over a massive tree trunk he had felled and was cutting into smaller logs.
That conflict—poverty versus conservation—has community leaders struggling to find ways for the cookers to work without destroying the forest for fuel.
"If we pull you out of the forest, what alternative do you have?" said John Kimani, a local leader.
"We are not trying to remove these people from the forest," he continued. "But we are trying to turn away from destroying to cooperating and saving something."
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