We began our shoot at the Philadelphia zoo early Saturday morning. They had been preparing for our crew for the last few weeks by acclimating the cats to strangers in the “back of house” area. Big cats don’t like strangers because they associate them with tranquilizing blow darts.

They had been using a member of the zoo staff holding a box wrapped in a garbage bag as a stand in for the cameraman and his Varicam. We were skeptical as we squeezed into the tiny space behind the cage. We were going to be very close to these cats.

The first cat up was Zenda, a female lion who needed to be weighed. The cat ran into the enclosure and immediately checked us out. She made a few noises letting us know that she wasn’t completely content with us being there. Then she relaxed and turned her focus to being weighed, in exchange for a bit of raw meat. The acclimating had paid off. She settled on the scale — 306 lbs!

The tiger cub was up next. This was part of the training process that will someday allow them to do a voluntary blood draw. It’s a two-person job. One keeper was poised to squirt evaporated milk into cat’s mouth. The other keeper was positioned to capture the tiger’s tail. They have worked their way up to getting the cat comfortable with them handling the tail, an amazing feet in itself. Now they are taking it even further. They take out an electric clipper and shave the tail! This part of the operation reveals a strange surprise. The tiger’s stripes are actually on its skin. The keeper feels for the tail vein and pokes it with a blunt needle. The tiger can walk away at any time but she lays still lapping at squirts of milk.

They have been training her for months and this is the last phase. Soon they will be able to do the real thing. It’s a long involved process but by doing it they can avoid the trauma of blow darting the cats in order to do routine health exams.

Back in 2003, as part of a project called wildlive!, I worked with an international conservation organisation - Fauna & Flora International (FFI) - to help them explore how mobile phones could be used to help raise money and awareness for gorilla conservation and local livelihoods. We ended up with a game called “Silverback”, an eight-level epic taking the player through the life of a mountain gorilla from birth through to adulthood. The game was very well received by the mobile gaming industry, scoring highly in their reviews. Sadly, three years later the service was pulled. The game was dragged down with it and forced into early ‘virtual’ retirement.

After becoming increasingly aware of the escalating conflict last October, it occurred to me that the time was right for “Silverback” to return. Thinking through what would need to be done to bring the game back to life, I realised that I knew enough people to make it happen relatively easily and for little cost. Six months later the game has been updated, re-built to support newer phones and re-launched via a new silverbackers.org website.

Back in 2003 there were more barriers to getting a mobile game to market than you could throw a stick, or mobile, at. Sadly, little has changed. To combat this and to keep costs down, avoid administrative headaches and to give us global coverage, we decided to follow Radiohead’s example and allow people access to the product first for free, and let them decide how much they think it’s worth. They can then choose whether or not they want to donate to the cause, something which we obviously hope they will. In order to leverage the power of social networking, we have also set up a Silverbackers Facebook Group for people to join and show their support.

With no funding this is going to be a purely viral marketing affair. The whole project is highly experimental, too. How we measure success is unclear, but sometimes the best way to find out is to do.

To download “Silverback” on your phone, visit the Silverbackers Download page (and remember to donate!).

The camera zoomed in on Ndeze as she fell from a tree branch and hit the ground
with a thud. Several people in the auditorium gasped, including me. Here I was,
worrying about Ndeze as if I didn’t know her! On the contrary, I’d been right there
when she was filmed for National Geographic’s “Gorilla Murders.”

I felt as if I’d been moved to another planet and asked to observe my job from the
viewpoint of a total stranger. The movie is so intense that I found myself reacting
emotionally before my rational brain could remind me of the facts. I know full well
that infant mountain gorillas, orphaned or not, love to play the climb-up-high-andlet-
go game, and that this is one of Ndeze’s favorites.

A crowd of invited guests had gathered to watch the screening in downtown
Washington, D.C., and we were nearing the end of the film. The narrator had just
introduced Ndeze and Ndakasi as victims of the rampant illegal charcoal trade in DR
Congo. The film shapes a story from the available facts: their mothers were shot
and killed in the Virunga National Park by corrupt park staff who simply wanted to
assert their own power.

To read the rest of Lucy’s story click here

I didn’t think it would be this easy. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t, you know, easy easy. Getting here required repeated negotiations with high-level contacts in rebel General Laurent Nkunda’s army, and then with the general himself.

It required driving an hour and a half outside the city to a UN base in the foothills of the Mikeno volcano, followed by an hour’s steep hike to the rebel base farther up the volcano. And it required another hour-plus hike just after dawn to get to the edge of the national park. All while being hurried along by rebel soldiers with big guns and spears who were terrified we’d miss our chance.

But then the overgrown fields ended abruptly in a shock of thick forest, and here we are. And there they are. An entire family of mountain gorillas. Just hanging out, in the trees, and in the brush beneath them.

They look exactly like gorillas.

It feels completely unreal.

Their black fur contrasts starkly with the bright green foliage, and yet recedes into the dark shadows of the dense forest. Some ignore us, while others gaze at us with intelligent-seeming curiosity. I want to reach my hand out to one of them. Or to grab one of the small, cuddly gorilla children, and enfold it in a giant gorilla-hug. Completely against the rules, of course. Human visitors are strictly required to stay a minimum of seven meters away from any wild gorillas, for the gorilla’s safety as much as anything else.

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I crowd into the tiny bit of shade on a curb next to Goma’s airport building, already mostly filled with a tripod bag, a camera case, my bag, the producer’s backpack, some empty water bottles, and Brent, the print photographer for the NG magazine story, and Mick, the producer.

Just as I sit down, I look over to where Erin, the cameraman, is setting up the camera and tripod. A man in a uniform is zeroing in.

I jump up to join Erin to try to stave off the confrontation before it starts.

It’s 12:30 pm, and we’re awaiting the arrival of Paulin Ngobobo, the key witness in the prosecution’s case against those accused of illegal charcoal trading and the massacre of six members of a gorilla family known as the Rugendo Group. He’s been reassigned to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital city, all the way across the country, but he’s flying back today to testify in a closed hearing.

We’ve been here for about an hour already, but the plane is going to be an hour late. Or it might have been cancelled. Or else it wasn’t supposed to arrive until two. Ish.

What I’m saying is, Paulin, the arriving witness, has texted a contact here to say he’s on a plane and it’s heading towards Goma. He’ll get here.

In the meantime, we’re trying to hold our ground at the airport.

Our fixer, Ferdinand, the local contact who managed to arrange permission for us to film here at the airport, is busy a few feet away. He and the airport hostess assigned to keep us company are arguing with a couple other guys who claim to be airport staff. Ferdinand is waving around the documents and letters he painstakingly gathered over the last day and a half giving us the right to enter onto the tarmac to film Paulin’s arrival.

Erin’s new adversary arrives, and demands to know what we’re doing.

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