TP 15 A Bonobo At Mbou Mon Tour Farm 2026

TP 15 A KINSHASA – MALEBO Mbou Mon Tour farm

Created in 1997 by university executives and the villagers, the nongovernmental organization

(NGO) “Mbou- Mon-Tour”(MMT) acts for the conservation of the environment and the local development. The presence of bonobos (Pan paniscus) was not confirmed by scientists of the Funds World for Nature (FWN) that is in 2005 while at the same time MMT called upon the international community since 2001 to obtain a support for the installation of community protection. The local majority ethnos group, Bateke, have a food interdict on the bonobos. Indeed, the bonobos are considered by this ethnos group as human which took refuge in the forest not to have honoured its debt, thus escaping an old usual law which made of an insolvent debtor the slave of his creditor. The installation of the actions of conservation and sensitizing by MMT makes it possible to reinforce and limit the erosion of this interdict.

In 2001 MMT accommodated the first round of the sensitizing for the DRC with the teaching trunk the large monkeys and their habitat. Today there are six sites of community conservation of the bonobos chosen by the local usual authorities in agreement with the population. These spaces are always accessible to human but the activities are reduced there (not hunting, no fields). Three of them regularly accommodate researchers and students of many countries (DRC, France, Belgium, the United States, Germany,..).

We travel to Tchumbiri, our destination on the Congo River, by wooden boat equipped with generator, frig, freezer and make our camp for the night in or nearby small villages. This enable us to have social contact with the local population and try to buy fresh vegetables and bread.

The boat has also a toilet, bucket wash facility and a roof protect us against rain and sun.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served on board.

Bottled water, tea and coffee are for free – beer and soft drinks available.

The site can be visited the whole year round but is not advisable during October, November, December due the daily rain which can take a big part of the day and night

The distance between Tchumbiri harbour and the farm is around 35 km and on a bad road, it takes about 1 h by 4x4 to arrive.

There is 1 building with 4 rooms and 1 with 6 – toilets and shower outside

Most of the places we can see the Bonobos – Nkala Mpela( +/- 40 animals), Embinima, Lifiri, Mbalatari – are at distance of +/- 9 km from the farm.

We use the 4x4 to arrive nearby and afterwards by foot.

The forest and its habitants

While in most other regions the bonobos live in swamp-forests, the animals in Bolobo live in a mosaic of forest and savannah. The soil is dry and access to the forest is very easy. The bonobos travel from one piece of forest to the other over the savannah. They also forage for fruits on the trees that grow on the savannah.

Even though the forest seems to be largely intact, very few of its animals remain.

Hunting has strongly decreased the populations of monkeys and other mammals.

The trackers that work for the project rarely observe guenons, although De Brazza’s monkeys (C. neglectus), Wolf’s guenons (C.wolfi) and orange-nosed guenons (C.

ascaniuswhitesidei) can still be found in the forest around the base. Fortunately, one of the group of trackers has recently discovered a small population of black mangabeys (Lophocebusaterrimus) and red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus badius), which gives hope that the forest will be repopulated with a variety of small monkeys in the future. Nowadays hunting with guns is prohibited, and we can expect an increase of the populations of monkeys in the coming years. Primates are important for seed dispersal in the forest, and their conservation is indispensable for the futureof the bonobos and the other animals of the forest.

Other mammals have also become rare, but there is still a population of approximately 20 bush-elephants, there are buffaloes and several species of antelopes. Every autumn, a couple of lions visits the area, making victims in the herds of cows, and sometimes even human victims. It is interesting to note that the elephants and lions are not hunted by the locals anymore.