{"id":556705,"date":"2026-04-29T10:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/556705\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T10:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:05:08","slug":"kenya-welcomes-four-critically-endangered-mountain-bongos-from-prague-zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/556705\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya welcomes four critically endangered mountain bongos from Prague zoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, about 17 mountain bongos were repatriated from the Rare Species Conservation Foundation in Florida<\/a>. The first repatriation to Kenya was in 2004 when 18 mountain bongos were flown into the country.<\/p>\n

According to the foundation, about 400 mountain bongos live in captivity in North America. Others are held in European zoos.<\/p>\n

Before being introduced to the wild from captivity, the bongos go through a series of adaptation phases for them to build the immunity needed to survive.<\/p>\n

Ahead of their repatriation to Kenya, Prague Zoo said each animal would undergo “acclimatisation and detailed monitoring before being gradually integrated” at the MKWC’s breeding programme.<\/p>\n

It said they would help strengthen the population’s genetic value and are expected to help produce viable offspring to be introduced into the wild in future.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, KWS posted images of the antelopes, saying they had arrived safely at the conservancy at the foot of Mount Kenya, and were “now settling in under close care”.<\/p>\n

“This marks a quiet but vital step in strengthening their population and securing their future,” it added.<\/p>\n

In 2022, the conservancy told local media that some mountain bongos previously repatriated had successfully been integrated into the wild and started breeding. Others, however, had died from tick-borne diseases.<\/p>\n

Kenya aims to raise the mountain bongo’s wild population to about 700 by 2050, through a national recovery plan led by the KWS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, about 17 mountain bongos were repatriated from the Rare Species Conservation Foundation in Florida. The first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-556705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}