Kenya welcomes four critically endangered mountain bongos from Czech Republic

Four mountain bongos, a rare type of antelope native to Kenya's highland forests, have arrived in Kenya after being sent from the Czech Republic. The male antelopes, from several zoos in Europe, arrived in the country on Tuesday night and were welcomed at Nairobi's main airport by Kenya's foreign and tourism ministers, along with other officials. They were then moved to a private wildlife reserve in central Kenya. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) hailed the "historic homecoming" of the antelopes as a "meaningful step" to their recovery in the wild. From about 500 in the 1970s, less than 100 are estimated to remain in the wild – fewer than live in zoos around the world, according to KWS. KWS director-general Erustus Kanga described Tuesday's arrival of the bongos as a "moment of hope, responsibility, and renewed commitment to securing the future of one of the world's rarest large mammals". KWS noted that the four male bongos would "play an important role in strengthening the gene pool" of the endangered animals by breeding with the existing population of 102 mountain bongos at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (MKWC). The mountain bongo is a large, chestnut-red antelope with narr