From Bongo Hunting to Bongo Protection

Interviewee

Peter Munge Karaoke

Ranger for Bongo Surveillance Project

Interviewer

Alison M. Jones

NWNL Director and Photographer

At Sangare Hills, Kenya, on January 31, 2018

Introductory Note

As a young man, Peter was assistant to Mike Prettejohn, Kenya’s foremost hunting guide for those on safari to shoot bongo. When these two realized Kenya’s indigenous forest bongo – the largest of all forest antelopes – were close to extinction, they ended bongo hunting and put forth a supreme effort to bring back all bongos sent to foreign zoos, so they could reestablish a self-sustaining bongo population in Kenya.

That effort to restore bongo populations in Kenya’s mountain forests is embodied in their Bongo Surveillance Project. This project is also helping restore endangered mountain forests that are bongo habitat. Incorporating respect for indigenous human forest communities, they’ve offered multi-faceted solutions to save forests as well as bongo. Saving the forest also means saving the source of Kenya’s rivers! Their success story continues as a positive and multi-faceted solution to one of today’s many environmental threats to our biodiversity and ecosystems.

Outline

A BONGO HUNTER NOW SAVING BONGO
HONEY-GATHERERS v BONGO
REDUCING BONGO POACHING
REFORESTATION EFFORTS
TODAY’S BONGO PROTECTION EFFORTS

Key Quote Our work is to recover the mountain bongo to numbers we had before. They will become more numerous because people are now moving out of the forest. We tell those still there, “Bongo will not help you at all, unless you stop poaching them. If you do, we can bring bongo tourism money into the Mau. But visitors can only come to see the bongo — IF they survive! That income to the Mau could help them in several ways things, especially new schools as well as so many other things. — Peter Munge Karaoke

A BONGO HUNTER NOW SAVING BONGO

NWNL Hello, Peter. I’m intrigued by your having adapted your career focus as an aide to bongo hunters into developing conservation regarding the elusive and gorgeous bongo antelopes. Let’s start our chat with your explaining your current focus.

PETER MUNGE I’m now doing “bongo surveillance” to help save the bongo for enjoyment of future populations. We are following and studying bongo in Kenya’s Mau Forest, now home to about 25 bongo that are safe there for the moment. We monitor them with camera traps there at a big salt lick. As a result of our protection issues, a few bongo are now again enjoying eating and dwelling in the Mau Forest, mainly because so many people now have left the forest.

NWNL Why are people now leaving the Mau Forest?

PETER MUNGE It is because we organized big meetings in the forest about our work saving the bongo. So, understanding the issue, they have left the bush and stopped cutting trees, posts, and timbers. Now it is a bit easier for us to protect the bongo there and for the bongo to increase their numbers. I think– in coming months – there will be no more problems, and the bongo will come back – maybe like before!

NWNL How long have you been working with the bongo?

PETER MUNGE Our Bongo Surveillance Project has been at work for 13 years. But before this I worked for more than 40 years in the forest, helping Mike Prettejohn as a tracker for bongo hunters, Now at 78, I’m really enjoying helping him in his effort to restore bongo populations.

When I was a young man in the ’60’s and ’70s., there were many bongo in the forest because there were fewer people there then as there are today and bongo were numerous. But as more and more people are coming into the forest, they are poaching bongo for meat.

NWNL Is their poaching for “bush meat” caused by their need for their own survival?

PETER MUNGE Yes. So, my work with Mike Prettejohn and his Bongo Surveillance Program is to record the mountain bongo in the Mau now and restore them to numbers we had there before. And they will become more numerous because people are now moving out of the forest.

NWNL If I lived in the forest, was poor and had no food for my family, what would you say to me if I wanted to go kill a bongo to provide meat for my family? How do you say to me, “Don’t do that”? Why should I decide not to kill the bongo? What do you say to such people?

PETER MUNGE Yes, we meet with such people to ask them not to kill the bongo for food. There are many people in the Mau Forest living on little “shambas” – what we call poor farms with small gardens. They may keep 1 or 2 cattle for milk; or grow potatoes. We tell those there, “Bongo will not help you at all, unless you stop poaching them. If you do, we can bring bongo tourism money into the Mau. But visitors can only come to see the bongo — IF they survive! That income to the Mau could help them in several ways things, especially helping to build new schools, as well as so many other things.

HONEY-GATHERERS v BONGO

NWNL I know there are Ogiek people who have lived in the Mau Forest for many generations, and I hear other people now conveniently call themselves Ogiek so they can remain in the forest….

PETER MUNGE We call the Ogiek people in the Maasai Mau section of the forest “Ndorobos.”

NWNL I understand “ndorobo” means “wanderer.”

PETER MUNGE Yes, and now they have become forest dwellers. They were given some “shambas” (“small farms” in Swahili) by the government of 3 to 5 acres each. Now they still live there and still search for and gather honey from forest bees. To avoid their going back into the forest where the bongo live, we are teaching them to farm, how to raise cattle and how to care for sheep or goats, which we call “mbuzi.”

We tell them, “If you go in the forest for bee harvesting and gathering wood, the bongo will be lost – “kabisa” [Swahili for “enough” or “finished”]. That is so because they will rid the forest of its animals. If that happens, no tourists will come to see bongo or help the local people.

So, to help them survive outside of the forest, we’ve given them beehives on the forest edge, where they will get more honey than when they are cutting down trees in the forest in their search for wild honey. This lets them get the same bees and same honey income.

In the forest, they ruin the beehives as they get the honey out of the trees; and they cut the trees down. That is the end of that hive – “Kabisa!” But with properly managed hives on the forest’s edge, they get much more honey – and money – than they do when collecting it in the forest. Plus, honey harvesting in the trees ruins the forest, because to get those hives, they burn the trees to smoke out the bees.

When the bees live in the trees, 1 hive will produce 1 kilo of honey. But each hive we gave them on the forest’s edge produces up to 60 kilos. So about 20 beehives produce a lot of honey! Plus, honey hunters will stop cutting the trees, since each forest hive only produces1 kilo.

And remember, if they set a fire to prevent bees from stinging them, that fire will burn that tree.

NWNL With the hives outside of the forest, do they still create smoke underneath the hive?

I ask because I love the Kenya honey that has been burned because that hint of that smoke adds to the wonderful taste of Kenyan wild honey!

PETER MUNGE Yes, you’re right. But they must smoke them to get the bees out and then the honey out. So, they use a smoker and our beehives that we gave them. We are thinking of giving them more.

REDUCING BONGO POACHING

NWNL You have talked about wanting to move people out of the Southwest Mau Forest. How many people are still there that you would like to move out, compared to 10 years ago?

PETER MUNGE There are very few left now.

NWNL So removal of poachers from the forest has been successful?

PETER MUNGE There was not much of problem because we gathered with them; we talked about the value of the forest; and they understood.

NWNL So most of them have left?

PETER MUNGE As I say, a small element remains of people hiding, but they never appear; and we’ve seen no recent evidence of poaching. For about 2 years now, we have not seen a footmark of a human near or leading to the bongo salt lick. So, it seems they left.

NWNL Good news.

PETER MUNGE We’re sure they left – since we never see traps now, not one.

REFORESTATION EFFORTS

NWNL What has happened, or will happen, to those people with homes and “shambas” [Swahili for “farms’] in the forest?

PETER MUNGE Those who were given shambas by the government are living now there.

NWNL Is there a plan to plant more trees where they have been cut down?

PETER MUNGE In the forest’s open areas, they now have planted new “mti” [“trees” in Swahili). Now, they are about to start a seedling nursery, because we are now teaching them how to do that. So soon they’ll be taking those seedlings to the open places in the forest. They are now just starting this in the school areas.

NWNL When I was in the Mau Forest in 2009, almost a decade ago, I saw open spaces where they had planted new little seedlings. But they never went back and gave them water; so they were just dead sticks in the ground.

So, I hope that when you take these seedlings in the nurseries to plant in the forest, will there be a method and a commitment to irrigate, maintain, and make sure the news trees grow?

PETER MUNGE Yeah. We do this heavy work because those people must be taught.

REGAINING BONGO PUT in ZOOS

NWNL In earlier times, you helped capture the bongo for zoos in the 1970’s.

PETER MUNGE Yeah, the old days. I’m the one who caught several bongos for Don Hunt to export. It was heavy work, “kesi ngumu.” But we succeeded and caught 37 bongo. Not even one died in the process because I captured them using deep pits. Often there was heavy rain and much water would fill the hole with the bongo. Phew – inside the pit! Some got pneumonia.

NWNL Did you find another way of capturing them that was safer?

PETER MUNGE Yes. We made small cages instead. Fortunately, some wild bongo remain here in Nanyuki, Kenya.

NWNL So with those you’ve saved, can we bring bongo back to a safe and healthy population?

PETER MUNGE Yes, we weren’t sure at first, but today we know. I did a good job.

NWNL That’s fantastic. Congratulations to you, thank you.

TODAY’S BONGO PROTECTION EFFORTS

PETER MUNGE After a while, I sat down to think how we can save bongo, Mike Prettejohn came to see me at my farm. I’ve got a little farm at Nawasha Kinegog. [Ed: correct spelling of location is uncertain.]. We discussed how to save the remaining bongo. We began with a small effort we called the Bongo Surveillance Project. Now it has grown greatly. But we still need more people to help us gather strength to succeed.

NWNL Yes. You also seem aware that you need local children to understand the special importance of bongo as they are growing up.

PETER MUNGE Yes, to understand. And the people who could not understand our work before, do now because of our meetings and so on.

Locally there are about 200 children we have reached. If they see me or Mike now, they call out, “Bongo man, bongo, bongo, bongo, bongo!” No child can now agree to help carry his father’s honey from the forest because they know the impact of cutting trees for honey on the bongo.

They see benefits our bongo restoration efforts have brought to them. Benefits of the bongo include a new water tank at school that we protect with wires surrounding the school. Next we are thinking of building classrooms.

NWNL Peter, your passion and dedication are fantastic. We thank you for helping save this rare species – and its habitat!

Posted by NWNL on August 29, 2024.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.

From Bongo Hunting to Bongo Protection Mara River Basin