Hold tight son, we're flying home: The inspiring story of one man's mission to return a gorilla family from an English wildlife park to the jungle

Tomorrow, a courier company will pick up one of its stranger deliveries from a quiet corner of rural Kent.



The package is a family of nine western lowland gorillas: a 30-year-old silverback called Djala, his four mates and their four infants, aged between eight months and six years old.

They will be flown in specially-built crates more than 5,000 miles, from the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park near Ashford, to a lush, tropical island in the Batéké Plateau National Park in Gabon, West Africa.



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Girls on tour: Kishi and her baby Akou, are part of the group of nine western lowland gorillas that will be released back into the wild in Africa

Packed in neighbouring crates will be 2,600lb of veterinary equipment and food. Their in-flight requirements are simple enough: water and a selection of fruit are all that’s needed in gorilla first-class.

When the sedated gorillas wake up on Monday, their surroundings will have changed quite a bit.

It will be goodbye to their grassy enclosure at Port Lympne, goodbye to our cool northern climate — and hello to the tropical heat of Africa.

But it will be a return to the place from where their ancestors hailed, a return to their natural home — the first large wilderness area to have seen gorillas hunted to extinction.

It is the most ambitious wild animal venture yet to have been undertaken by conservationist Damian Aspinall of the Aspinall Foundation, which runs Port Lympne and its sister wildlife park, Howletts, also in Kent.

Finally free: The family will travel more than 5,000 miles, from the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent, to the Batéké Plateau National Park in Gabon, West Africa to start a 'normal life' outside captivity We are family: Djala, a male 30-year-old silverback, Kishi and her baby Akou, pictured, and another three females and three infants will be released by the Aspinall Foundation

‘This is, without question, the riskiest and bravest thing we’ve ever done,’ says Aspinall, 53, who inherited control of the wildlife parks from his late father, John Aspinall, the casino owner.

‘This will be the first time in the world that anyone has delivered a whole gorilla family back to Africa. It could go horribly wrong.’

In the past, Aspinall has sent dozens of animals back to the wild. Last year, three black rhinos were returned to Tanzania and a group of endangered langur monkeys boosted the shrinking population in Java, Indonesia.

He has also sent gorillas back to the wild in the Congo and Gabon — his wildlife reserves there cover a million acres.

‘Previously, we’ve sent young orphaned gorillas back,’ he says. ‘It’s more difficult with adults. It’s just like with humans — if you take babies or young children and move them to another city, they won’t notice any difference.

‘If you take gorillas to Africa when they’re young, they teach themselves how to live. But if you take them as adults, they have to start again.

‘You can give a pill to young gorillas if one of them gets a bite. You can’t give a grown gorilla in the wild antibiotics.’

When young gorillas have been introduced to the wild on previous occasions, they have been walked around the forest by ‘eco-nannies’, who point out which plants are poisonous, and give them veterinary care.



This won’t be possible with a family group, protected by their 440lb silverback patriarch, Djala, who would attack any human who intervened.

‘They’re like humans,’ he says. ‘Some are easy-going and you can get on with them. Others you can’t.’

Djala looks peaceful enough in his enclosure today, munching on a selection of greens, as his family play around him. But, if I were to jump over the wall to join him, I wouldn’t be long for this world.

His defensive personality is a product of the cruelty he encountered as an infant. Unlike his offspring — all raised in captivity — Djala will really be returning home to the forests of his birth.

He was born in the wild but orphaned as an infant by poachers who slaughtered his family to supply the illegal bushmeat trade.

Pet project: Damian Aspinall, 53, pictured with Kifu, calls the decision to move the gorilla family from the wildlife park the 'riskiest and bravest thing' he has ever done

Abandoned and alone, he was given to some local children as a pet and badly mistreated. By some miracle, a French businessman, prospecting for minerals, flew over the village in a helicopter and spotted Djala about to be slaughtered and eaten.

He landed and rescued Djala, who was later transferred into the care of the Aspinall Foundation in England — where he flourished, fathered 15 offspring (of which four are being taken to Africa) and has grown into one of the largest silverbacks in captivity.



Attached as he is to Djala and his family, Aspinall will be delighted to see them go.

‘It isn’t hard to say goodbye,’ he says. ‘In fact, it’s very, very hard to keep them. It’s much easier in my heart and soul to free them. Otherwise, I just feel like a jailer for prisoners without parole.’

Aspinall believes that, while it is important to look after animals in captivity, owners of zoos and wildlife parks also have a responsibility to reintroduce animals to the wild.

‘The problem with most zoos is that they’re caught in a trap. They were set up years ago, when conservation wasn’t a consideration, with small sites and small enclosures. Then conservation became a hot topic.

‘But the people who run zoos are stuck with a public addicted to seeing row upon row of animals, in enclosures that are too small. To get people through the door, you have to do sea-lion shows, or penguin shows, or whatever it is.

‘The question you have to ask of zoos is: Is their ethos to make money, or to breed animals to send back into the wild?’

Aspinall has had great success with his breeding programme.

In the past decade, he has been responsible for one in three European rhino births, and has bred 26 of the 60 gorillas born in Europe. Because he now has 70 gorillas, he is able to send nine back to Africa, and still maintain his breeding programme.

‘We keep them in huge numbers, to breed them in huge numbers, so we can send them back,’ he says. ‘But there’s no money in that — it’s the worst business decision you could make.

‘In many cases, zoos don’t want animals to breed; they keep them on the Pill. The zoos can’t afford their animals to have young — you’ve got to house them and employ more staff.’

In an ideal world, Aspinall would empty both his wildlife parks and return every animal to the wild.

‘The ultimate aim would be to send back all the animals that aren’t truly endangered,’ he says. ‘But some species — like black rhino — need protecting at the moment. If we can protect animals in the wild properly, then there’s no need for zoos. That’s got to be the ultimate aim. But that’s a 30-year dream.’

Animal success: Damian, photographed at Howletts Wild Animal Park with Kifu, a male who was born at the zoo, now has 70 gorillas in his two parks thanks to his breeding programme

Next load: Kishi, Akou and their family are part of a long tradition where the Aspinall Foundation has sent animals back into the wild

Rare and endangered animals are in the Aspinall blood. Damian’s father, John, sparked the family interest in wildlife. After he married his first wife, Jane Hastings, in 1956, he kept a capuchin monkey, a tiger and two brown bears in his garden shed in Eaton Place, Belgravia.

He bought the Howletts estate with a £5,000 racing bet, and began building up a private menagerie. He expanded his animal collection in 1973, when he acquired the Port Lympne estate. Howletts opened to the public in 1975 and Port Lympne in 1976.

Aspinall, who died in 2000, aged 74, let Damian play with the gorillas as an infant. Damian, in turn, let his two older daughters play with the animals as children.

When it came to his youngest, Freya — his daughter by the TV presenter Donna Air — modern security concerns have meant she hasn’t been in the gorilla’s enclosure.

‘It’s a health and safety thing,’ he says ruefully. ‘[The police and social services] don’t understand it; they think gorillas are beasts.’

Though the family has been reintroducing animals to the wild for decades, with Djala and his family Aspinall is planning something new.

‘We will release them onto an island in the middle of a river and they will learn to live in the forest, acclimatise to the climate and start to learn which trees they can eat,’ Aspinall explains.

After tomorrow’s airlift with courier firm DHL, if all goes to plan, the gorillas will be led off the island and into the vast, open acres of Gabon’s Batéké Plateau. ‘We are going into the unknown,’ admits Aspinall. He knows it will be a terrible shock to the system for the gorillas.

In Kent, they had the best possible diet: there are acres of organic herb garden to feed them, along with fresh mangoes, lychees and paw-paws. In recent weeks, though, their diet has been made plainer to prepare them for self-sufficiency on the forest floor.

‘It’s fraught with dangers,’ says Aspinall. ‘They’re going to be picked up, crated and shoved on to this rainforest island in the middle of Gabon. Then they’re going to wake up and wonder what’s happened to them.’ Despite the risks, the alternative — keeping the gorillas in indefinite captivity — is too miserable to contemplate.

All the expense and preparations for the great gorilla delivery will be worth it for that priceless moment when Djala takes his first tentative steps back into the forest — leading his family back to his ancestral territory.