Printed on August 27, 2007 National Geographic Channel

June 2008 Archives

Gaming for a good cause…

June 30, 2008 6:22 PM

Ken Banks

kiwanja.net

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!).

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Looking back on my work with the Mountain Gorillas

By explorer

June 30, 2008 5:11 PM

Lucy H. Spelman

Mountain Gorilla Vet Project Field Manager - MGVP.org

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

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Face to face with gentle giants

By explorer

June 27, 2008 3:28 PM

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

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.

Continue reading Face to face with gentle giants.

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A rough start in Goma

By explorer

June 23, 2008 2:13 PM

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

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.

Continue reading A rough start in Goma.

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Heading to the Congo…

By explorer

June 19, 2008 3:00 PM

Naomi Schwarz

National Geographic Television

I’m not quite sure how to handle Rwanda. We’re not staying. We’ve flown into Kigali, the capital, but we’re on our way to Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Goma is one of the biggest cities in eastern Congo, and it’s just over the border from Rwanda. We’re going there to film a documentary about wildlife conservation in Virunga National Park, the first national park in Africa, and one of the world’s most diverse and fragile ecosystems.

It’s the home of more than half of the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas, several of whom were massacred last year in what seemed to be a cold-blooded execution. People are telling us these killings are closely linked with the illegal trade in charcoal being conducted within the park. On the face of it this has nothing to do with Rwanda. And yet I can’t treat this stopover like any other. Not hard to figure out why. The Rwandan genocide is old news at this point, sadly superceded by the crisis in Darfur and the war in Iraq and everything else that has happened in the last 14 years. But this is the first time I’ve been here. These are the first impressions, the first images and faces and people I’ve ever seen up close to give context to the genocide that killed nearly one million Rwandans in the space of about three months.

Continue reading Heading to the Congo….

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A purrrr-fect place to film

By explorer

June 6, 2008 1:09 PM

Jennifer Kurushima

National Geographic Television

Luxor is a beautiful city, and has a completely different atmosphere than the crowded streets of Cairo. The Nile is full of ferries, small boats, cruise ships, and of course falukas. Tall elegant hotels and restaurants along with the sites of Luxor and Karnack Temple line the East Bank of the Nile while across to the West we can see lush farmland and the Valley of the Kings. After our success in the Cairo market, our plan of action was to try our hands at catching cats in the marketplace of Luxor. We decided that the team should breakup into smaller groups with the hope that this would reduce the possibility of drawing a crowd, and frightening away the cats. One team was to stay along the main strip of the tourist market, while the other would search the areas surrounding the local’s market.

Photo: Dana Kemp

I was teamed up with Dr. Nashwa Waly from Assiut University and Dr. Susan Little from the Winn Feline Foundation to scour the streets and alleys behind the marketplace. I quickly came to appreciate Dr. Nashwa’s fluency in Egyptian Arabic as we were able to knock on people’s doors and simply ask if they owned any cats. T his was much easier than chasing them through the streets! I am impressed by the hospitality and friendliness of the Egyptian people we met. More than once, after we explained our research, they would invite us in for a cup of tea or a meal. As word spread children came running with their cats held out before them. A quick swab along the inside of the check, a photograph, and a tuna treat, and the cats were returned home, relatively unperturbed. The children seem to be exceptionally amused by our efforts and are eager to help find us cats, however, we did have to refuse the occasional puppy. Later this evening we will be riding a ferry to the west bank of the Nile to hunt for cats in a slightly more rural setting. We are expecting the cats to be more active in the dusk. I hope our good luck holds!

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Searching for felines in Egypt

By explorer

June 2, 2008 8:57 AM

Leslie Lyons

Geneticist

Our arrival into Egypt is uneventful. This is a small miracle as little does the Nat Geo production team know that one of us is afraid to fly, one of us broke down in tears when we learned about all the vaccinations we needed, two of us have never left the western United States, and I am more used to traveling alone than taking care of others on a fairly complicated expedition. I am deathly afraid of someone getting a bad scratch or bite and having to seek medical care.

Photo: Dana Kemp

It is not until the morning that I steal away to the roof of the hotel to see my first glimpses of the pyramids, through the morning hazy and fog. I am really here, a lifelong goal, to see Egypt! Coming from a small south western town in Pennsylvania, Uniontown, I never thought I would have these opportunities, I never knew scientists got to do things like this. And, all over cats! The first encounter with the cats is on the back streets of Giza, the pyramids are in the background, how totally awesome. Ha, I was a bit worried that we would not find the cats, perhaps we would have to wait until dawn or dusk, but no, they are everywhere! Look any directions and there they are, part of the background, and important part of the ecosystem as well. We are dressed in black, little scientist ninjas. We start our first approach of the cats. The children of Giza have surrounded us, we have a big camera and a big stick with a big club attached to it (the boom), 2 producers and 4 cat catchers. The cats see us stealthily approaching like a herd of elephants, they hunch-up, hiss, and run, kicking up dirt as they go. The flight instinct of the cats is strong here, we need cats that are used to people. This is not going to work, panic! How are we going to film, but really collect the samples we need for the study? Let’s start easy, let’s go to the tourist market area to start. Tune in to the premiere of Explorer: Science of Cats on June 10 at 10p to find out exactly what Leslie found while searching in Egypt.

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June 2008 Archives

Gaming for a good cause…

Looking back on my work with the Mountain Gorillas

Face to face with gentle giants

A rough start in Goma

Heading to the Congo…

A purrrr-fect place to film

Searching for felines in Egypt

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