As seen on BBC Two's Wilderness with Simon Reeve
You met the Tenkile. Here is the rest of its story.
Simon Reeve spent days crossing the Torricelli Mountains to find one of the rarest animals on Earth. It is still here because the people who own this forest chose to protect it, and they are still protecting it today.
From about 100 animals to more than 300
When the Tenkile Conservation Alliance formed in 2001, there may have been as few as 100 Tenkile left. A growing human population was hunting them for food, and nobody was coming to stop it.
What changed was a decision made in the villages themselves. Landowners across the western Torricelli agreed to a hunting moratorium on the Tenkile, and in 2007 villages in the east did the same for its golden-shouldered cousin, the Weimang. Today 41 villages and 13,560 people are part of the alliance, and the Tenkile population has climbed past 300.
What's happened since
TCA's staff and rangers record what they find in PAM, the Protected Areas Monitoring app built for the rangers who patrol the Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area (TMRCA). They have logged more than 30,000 surveys covering wildlife, culture, environmental damage and village life, and the app tracks close to 4,000 species of plants and animals. Those records helped shut down an illegal logging road.
The surveys are also turning up birds staff had not documented before, including the buff-breasted paradise kingfisher and the hooded pitohui, one of the few poisonous birds known anywhere in the world.
Every patrol, mapped
PAM now supports ranger patrols. When a patrol starts, the app records the route the ranger walks and pins each observation to the exact point on that route where it was made. Supervisors can assign tasks at specific points along the way, then review the whole patrol afterward: the path walked, what was seen, and which tasks were completed.
A Conservation Deed
On June 30, 2026, TCA signed a Conservation Deed with 266 clan leaders, 129 village representatives and 40 full-time staff from all 41 villages. It is the legal foundation for protecting the Torricelli while the formal Conservation Area with CEPA is finalized.
Follow the Tenkile from the Torricelli
Occasional updates from the Tenkile Conservation Alliance. All we need is your email.
Keep the Torricelli protected
Rangers, patrols and village programs are what kept the Tenkile alive after it was filmed. Your support pays to help us continue that mission.