Kisangani, DRC – September 2, 2025 – The cage is empty. And the silence is deafening.
After 71 days of alarm, Maria, a baby bonobo rescued from poaching, died on August 20 in chilling institutional indifference. A complete failure of conservation in the DRC.
Her name was Maria.
No, she wasn’t “just a bonobo.”
She was a baby. An orphan. A survivor of poaching. A fragile breath in a brutal world.
But that breath has faded.
On September 20, 2025, Maria died.
Of diarrhea. Of loneliness. Of neglect. Of silence.
And now?
Now there’s nothing left.
Nothing but emptiness.
An empty cage.
A silence that screams louder than before.
And this question: Where was ICCN while a baby bonobo was slowly dying?
On July 13, 2025, Maria was intercepted in Ndjale, in the province of Tshuapa. An administrative seizure. A life torn from the hell of poaching, only to be locked up elsewhere — in a Kisangani zoo. Still under construction. No vet. No proper diet. No medical care. A cell more than a cage, where each passing day took her further from life.
Maria paced in circles. Empty eyes. Skin and bones. And no one acted.
On August 25, KilaloPress raised the alarm. We wrote:
“Every passing day is another day against life.”
We documented the irregularities:
A transfer carried out with a fake administrative document allegedly signed on behalf of ICCN.
An unrecognized agent.
A local security council denouncing the forgery.
Yet the man was released… and the bonobo remained a prisoner.
NGOs wrote. Experts spoke. Journalists investigated. ICCN received the reports. So did the ministry.
And nothing was done.
Then, on august 20, Maria collapsed.
A stream of diarrhea. A dehydrated body.
Too late to attempt a transfer to a local vet — who was also absent.
The baby died in indifference, without even a comforting gaze to accompany her.
When we questioned a senior ICCN official, he coldly replied:
“That’s one request too many!”
That day, we understood.
It wasn’t an oversight. It was a choice.
A choice of silence.
A choice of inaction.
A choice to trivialize a life.
So let’s ask the real question:
Was Maria’s death the result of too many requests — or a total lack of humanity?
Did ICCN see her body?
Did they take the time to pay their respects?
Do they even understand what it means for a baby bonobo to die, uncared for, in a filthy cage, alone, after 71 days of suffering?
We saw her.
And now, so have you.
The cage is still there, in the unfinished zoo.
But empty.
A void that says everything. A void that screams.
No animal. No care. No ICCN.
So we ask: Is ICCN still here? Or has it disappeared too?
Maybe someone will say, “She was just an animal.”
But Maria was a life.
A life the DRC should have been proud to protect.
And those who let it happen — out of laziness, calculation, or cowardice — will have to live with it.
Or maybe not, because that would require a conscience.
It wasn’t just the intestines of a little creature that failed that day.
It was the very foundations of DRC’s conservation policy that collapsed with her.
Don’t try to rationalize it. There’s nothing left to explain.
Everything had been said, written, sent, shared.
This was no longer a lack of information.
It was a refusal to act.
And Maria is dead.
A Congolese conservationist bitterly told us a month ago:
“Since Congolese don’t want to care for their iconic species, we might as well send them straight to paradise at Vantara.”
Too late.
Even India never got to see Maria.
Bravo, ICCN.
Either it’s dead.
Or it has disappeared.
But we — the media and friends of nature — we are still here.
And we will not forget Maria.
By KilaloPress