The mountain gorilla rebound is impressive in the light of the animal’s unhurried reproductive biology. Both locations, once heavily wooded, are now surrounded by intense agriculture and dense human populations. The other habitat is located in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and contiguous Sarambwe Nature Reserve in DRC. One is the Virunga Mountain Range, including the Mikeno Sector of Virunga National Park in DRC, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. Their habitat is limited to just 300 square miles, divided between two locations. Living in cloud forests at 8,000 to 13,000 feet, mountain gorillas are entirely covered in long black fur, an adaptation to cold that distinguishes them from lowland gorillas. But the increase is incredibly encouraging.” These are still very fragile populations. “These population survey results signal a real recovery,” says Anna Behm Masozera, director of the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), based in Rwanda. The new data prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to change the mountain gorilla’s status, from critically endangered to endangered. Today, according to the most recent studies, there are 1,063. In 2008, field surveys estimated 680 mountain gorillas. In Virunga National Park, a 23-member group, Kabirizi, named for the lead silverback, included seven adult females and seven infants.Īnd yet: Despite a 20-year civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has killed millions of people, relentless poaching and an exploding human population, the mountain gorilla is making an amazing comeback, thanks to the selfless commitment of countless Africans. Conservationists and officials work with residents to enhance mountain gorilla survival. Brent Stirton’s photograph of park rangers carrying the giant corpse of the silverback Senkwekwe stunned the world, renewing speculation that the mountain gorilla might not survive the rapaciousness of its primate cousin, Homo sapiens.Ī village on the edge of Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. In 2007, Congolese mafia henchmen executed seven of the animals, reportedly to discourage officials from enforcing bans on producing charcoal in the park. Years after Fossey sounded the alarm, the killing of mountain gorillas continued. The park’s director himself, Emmanuel de Merode, survived an attempted assassination in 2014, just hours after submitting a report on illegal oil exploration in the park. She would not be the last person to put her life on the line for this noble creature: In the past 20 years, more than 175 park rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, home to many of the world’s mountain gorillas, have been killed in the line of duty, with eight gunned down in 2018 and another killing last year. By then, as all the world was shocked to learn, Fossey, too, had been murdered, in her cabin in Karisoke, a research site in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda. Her 1983 book, Gorillas in the Mist, an affecting blend of field journal and memoir, and especially the 1988 feature movie of the same name, brought global attention to the animal’s plight. “The mountain gorilla faces a grave danger of extinction-primarily because of the encroachments of native man upon its habitat,” she wrote. Mountain gorillas, today one of the most beloved wild animals on the planet, were little known four decades ago when the American primatologist Dian Fossey, commenting on a spate of brutal killings by poachers, warned that only around 220 of the animals were left.
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