Elie Mundima

Category: Out on Patrol | Date: Apr 04 2007 | By: admin

On patrol, Troop 1 found this trap to catch small animals looking for shelter.

In the middle you will see a gap betwen the vertical sticks. In this gap is a circular metal wire which pulls tight when the animal pushes through the circle created by the wire.

All traps are forbidden in the park, and so it is necessary that we disarm the wire trap and take the wire with us back to camp, as well as destroying all the sticks so that it is difficult for poachers to reconstruct the trap.

Shortly afterwards a trap to catch okapi was found. You can see how the branch is pulled over tight, with a cord attached to a trap of metal wire, hidden in the ground.

The wire is concealed on a well worn path that the okapi use, and once the trap is disturbed by an okapi putting his foot inside the wire, the branch is released, and the wire tightens around the leg. The branch moves up, pulling the okapi off his feet, onto his back, and then partially lifts him into the air. Stuck in this position, unless the poacher returns soon after, the okapi will die a slow and painful death.

It takes two people to disarm this trap, with one holding the branch while the other takes apart the wire. It requires full attention by both persons otherwise one lapse in concentration and the ranger working on the wire could badly hurt himself, even lose a finger.

Below, you can see it is Hamule Kibingo who has taken the responsibility of holding the branch still.

They came across many more different kinds of traps, on average 10 a day while on patrol, all varying in type for all different types of animals. Here is just a small collection of the traps that they found:

And unfortunately, they found one which had already caught its prey.

Tomorrow, I will show you about other preventative measures taken to stop poachers from trapping in this region.

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