31 May 2017

New Report: Garamba National Park, DRC

Here’s an interesting report. Mathias D’haen recently moved to work in Garamba NP in the DRC and got in touch a few months ago for advice on some mongooses he had seen. They were later confirmed as the barely known Pousargue’s Mongoose. He has taken a break from his Giraffe thesis to send some more information about mammal watching in the park and he has recorded 51 species including Yellow-backed & Red-flanked Duikers, Aardvark, Black-legged Mongoose and Patas & De Brazza’s Monkey. There is a lot still left to see.

Here’s his report.

Jon

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5 Comments

  • 1 June 2017
    AfriBats

    Impressive mammal sightings! Garamba mammals, including some of Mathias’s observations, are accessible here
    http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=4&nelng=30&swlat=3&swlng=29&taxon_id=40151&subview=grid

  • 1 June 2017
    Maurice Tijm

    Great report! Very nice to see some detailed mammal lists from this region and a judgement on their abundance and viewability. The region is rather off limits so it great to learn about it this way.

    Great to hear some of the larger mammals like lion still do well. African Palm Civet and Debrazza’s monkey are listed as common: do they use more habitats than the densely forested areas or are they simply common in the forests?

    All the best over there

    Maurice

  • 1 June 2017
    Charles Foley

    That’s a great report Mathias – thanks for submitting it. Its really useful to get reports from some of these more remote and hard to reach parks. A lot of your photos are taken from the air. Are you using a helicopter or are you taking them from a fixed wing plane? If its the latter, its pretty impressive that you can get those pictures.

    I’ve studied Savanna elephants for many years, and that bull looks significantly more like a Forest than a Savanna elephant. I can’t tell from the photo whether its a one tusker or tuskless; I’ve only ever seen one tuskless Savanna elephant bull, although in areas of high poaching pressure (which unfortunately is the case in Garamba), you would expect it to be more common.

    Charles

  • 5 June 2017
    Mathias D'haen

    Thanks for the comments Maurice and Charles.
    I haven’t seen de Brazza’s nor palm civet in the densest forests as I simply haven’t spend enough time there. I mostly see them around our camp here which is probably best described as wooded savannah with abundant vegetation of vitex doniana, kigelia africana and piliostigma thoningii.
    The aerial photos are taken from a small fixed wing plane.
    The bull was tuskless – interesting to hear it’s that rare in other places.
    Something else, yesterday I photographed some bats roosting in a borassus palm. Now that I see the photos on a bigger screen I think they are Mauritian tomb bats, but not 100% sure. If anyone has a different opinion, please let me know: https://observation.org/waarneming/view/139560433

    • 5 June 2017
      Jon Hall

      They do look like Mauritian Tomb Bats to me and I cannot think of anything else they look like unless there are some other species there that I’m unaware of

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