How Africa is winning battle to save mountain gorillas

Travelling for holidays and business trips sometimes can be very pleasurable and exciting at the same time, and also very boring and uninteresting. Thant depends on how such trip or movement is planned.

A recent survey of the critically endangered mountain gorilla has revealed that, it is the only great ape in the world whose population is rising. The census puts the wild population of mountain gorillas at 1,004 which is a 25 percent increase since 2010.

Mountain gorillas have been the focus of concerted conservation efforts in recent decades and those endeavours appear to have been vindicated by the latest figures.

The latest survey took place in the Virunga Massif, where the gorilla population is believed to have risen from 480 in 2010 to 604 in 2018. Add that to the 400 great apes living in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and you have a wild population of just over 1,000.

Mountain gorillas are found in only two locations in the world: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda and the Virunga Massif, which straddles the border between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

David Attenborough, who famously filmed the great apes for the BBC in the 1970s, said: “When I first visited the mountain gorillas in 1979, the situation was dire; the number of these remarkable animals was dreadfully small.

“It is incredibly heartening therefore to see how the efforts of so many different groups – communities, governments, NGOs – have paid off. Now the challenge must be to ensure that these achievements are sustained long into the future.”

Despite the good news, conservationists have warned that this is no time for complacency. While partaking in the Virunga Massif survey, teams found and destroyed more than 380 snares, which are set for antelope but often kill or maim mountain gorillas. Indeed, one of the primates was found dead in a snare.

Furthermore, the effect of climate change, oil exploration and infrastructure development also pose a major threat to the apes, which, according to conservationists, face an increased risk of catching human-borne diseases.

The results of the latest gorilla census would come as welcome news to some industry players like Dian Fossey, the conservationist who dedicated her life to protecting the great apes, long before their plight entered mainstream consciousness.

The American zoologist travelled to East Africa in the 1960s and was so taken by mountain gorillas that she built a hut in the Rwandan side of the Virunga Massif so she could study them.

Locals called her Nyiramacibiri – which means ‘woman who lives alone on the mountain’ – and many people thought she was bonkers.

At the time, poaching was a major threat to gorillas, whose body parts were often fashioned into grotesque souvenirs that were sold to tourists.

Stunned at such horrors, Fossey launched a lonely campaign against poaching and illegal farming, another major threat to the apes.

“At first, people didn’t like her. They thought she was denying them their rights to hunt and graze cattle in the forest,” said Francis Bayingana, a guide, who led me on a trek through Virunga Massif back in 2015.

“But over time she started employing porters, trackers, researchers and they could see her methodology and started to like her.”

But Fossey still had many enemies and on Boxing Day in 1985, she was fatally stabbed at her home. Nobody was ever prosecuted for her murder.

Her death, however, marked a new epoch for gorilla protection. The small charity she set up to tackle poaching, the Digit Fund, grew into the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, which now employs around 120 people.

“Today, mountain gorilla numbers are looking much healthier, but this is no time for complacency,” said Alison Mollon, Director of Operations for Africa at Fauna & Flora International (FFI).

“We need to remain extremely vigilant, particularly in light of the ever-present and growing threat posed by the transmission of human-borne diseases that are relatively innocuous for us, but potentially fatal to other primates.” He stated.