Mountain Gorillas Increase

it's all about family, credit WWF

Conservation success stories are becoming fewer in the age of the Sixth Great Extinction. But there are stories that bring hope and spur more efforts to save animals endangered by man's abuse of his only home in the universe. One of these is the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) living in the highlands of central Africa. After years of effort midst warfare and violent poaching--six rangers were killed in April--the population of these peaceful, intelligent primates has increased by 25% since 2010 in the Virunga Massif.

Conservationist and UN Ambassador,Sir Richard Attenborough, who first visited the gorillas in 1979, said of his first encounter, “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know-–they are so like us.” He praised the work of conservation groups which have succeeded in bringing our relative back from the brink of extinction. The new survey was undertaken in difficult terrain conditions by 12 teams of surveyors covering 2,000 km² of mountainous forest in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo. Virunga's population has risen to 604 from 480 counted in the previous survey of 2010. Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable national park contains the remaining mountain gorilla population; in 2012 over 400 gorillas were counted there. The increase in numbers can be directly attributed to human protection and care, but wire snares set by locals to capture bush meat still pose a deadly threat to gorillas. The survey team destroyed 380 snares including one that contained a dead gorilla--truly a horrible and painful death.

Another recent survey found that there are double the number of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) than previously estimated. There are now estimated to be 360,000 of this subspecies, or 99% of all extant gorillas. This population has fallen by 20% in eight years due to threats summarized by researchers as guns, germs and greed.