5/27/08

Ape researcher missing in DRC


Ape researcher missing in DRC
Published:May 27, 2008


The researcher had been studying apes in the Democratic Republic of Congo 

BERLIN - A German woman has gone missing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) while studying great apes, a research institute said today.

The evolutionary anthropology specialist was reported missing in the DR Congo's Salonga National Park on Thursday, said the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig in eastern Germany.

The institute did not name the woman but mass circulation daily Bild identified her as 23 year-old Esther Carlitz.

She left an assistant after they had observed a troop of endangered Bonobo apes and returned to their base at Camp Lui Kotal in the southwest of the park alone, ignoring warnings not to do so.

"She had a map and a compass. When her assistant returned to the camp in the evening and found she was not there, he raised the alarm."

"Scientists and about 50 Congolese have been searching for her around the clock since then but in vain," the institute said.

The Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) said search parties were combing the rain forests around the camp but had still found no trace of her.

"It is very unusual for a researcher to disappear like this. We do not know what happened," the ICCN's Cosma Wilungula told AFP, but ruled out an abduction.

A colleague at the Max Planck Institute working in the camp told reporters: "She may have got lost and been bitten by a snake. We have no idea."

The Salonga park is Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve and lies in the Congo River basin.





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