Snatched as infants, two gorillas flown home thanks to UN agency

It all began when they were snatched as infants from their home in Cameroon, their mothers possibly killed, and smuggled across the border to be put up for sale in a Nigerian city hundreds of miles from where they were born.

Today, in a repatriation co-funded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Brighter and Twiggy were jetting back home, a pair of Western lowland gorillas, among the rarest and most endangered species on earth, saved by the vigilance of wildlife campaigners and the Nigerian State Minister for the Environment.

"Great apes across Africa and South-East Asia are in peril," Robert Hepworth, Deputy Director in UNEP's Division of Environmental Conventions, said: "The massive and unrelenting destruction of their habitats, the slaughtering of apes for meat and the pet trade are just some of the factors behind their demise. Indeed it is quite likely that Brighter and Twiggy fell into the hands of smugglers after their mothers were killed for bushmeat."

Calling this story of two of humankind's closet living relatives "not just one of tragedy, but of hope," he added: "It sends a loud and clear signal to poachers and smugglers that their illegal and destructive activities will no longer be tolerated there and that there is no longer a profit to be had from these wildlife crimes."

Brighter and Twiggy will now take up residence in the world famous Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon. The story of how they came to be bought in the Sabon Gari animal market in Kano by a businessman is shrouded in mystery. It is believed they were born in south or east Cameroon and captured by poachers when they were two years old.

Once alerted by wildlife campaigners, Environment Minister Imeh Okopido took action to save the "Kano Two" as they have become to be known, intervening last December to confiscate them from the businessman without compensation.

Their arrival at Limbe will bring the total of gorillas there to 10. If they stay healthy, they should live to be over 40, wildlife experts said. Twiggy has nerve damage to an arm, which just hangs down, but otherwise they both appear in good physical and mental shape. To fly them home required special permits under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a UNEP-linked treaty.

Under its Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP), UNEP is co-funding the repatriation with support from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. UNEP is working to develop great ape conservation strategies in all of the 23 States in Africa and South-East Asia that have ape populations.

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