Latest Mountain Gorilla Stories

A Wildlife Authority spokeswoman said on Monday that Facebook and Twitter users will be able to "befriend" rare Ugandan mountain gorillas, as well as track their movements. Lillian Nsubuga told AFP that the scheme was designed to promote Uganda's nascent tourism industry, and users will be able to receive updates about their endangered primate friends. "Through geo-tracking and GPS, you'll be able to get information about new births within the family and other information," she said,...

Eighteen baby mountain gorillas have been "baptized" at an annual event in Rwanda to signify the seriousness of the endangerment of the species.  However, the baby gorillas were not physically at the event, which was held at a national park where the primates live.There were 18 masked people that represented the gorillas at the event, which included songs and dances and was attended by senior government officials like Prime Minister Bernard Makuza. Monique Nsanzabaganwa, a Tourism...

A new census count released on Tuesday showed the population of mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park has risen by 12.5 percent.Rangers from the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) conducted more than 128 patrols during the eight-week census.They found that about 211 of the great apes were estimated to be currently residing in Africa's oldest national park, with 81 new arrivals now living there permanently.ICCN gorilla monitoring head Innocent...

Cameroon has established a new national park that seeks to protect the world's rarest gorilla. Takamanda National Park, which borders Nigeria, is home to an estimated 115 endangered Cross River gorillas. Experts believe the total population of the subspecies is less than 300.The move coincides with an initial meeting in Rome of governments of 10 gorilla range states that seek to protect the endangered primates.The Gorilla Agreement, finalized in June, includes all the countries where the...

Rangers returned to Virunga National Park on Friday after being forced to flee the area in September 2007 when armed Tutsi rebels loyal to General Laurent Nkunda took over the park's gorilla sector.Virunga's gorilla sector is home to 200 of the world's remaining 700 mountain gorillas, which live in forests along the borders with Rwanda and Uganda. The sector suffered repeated attacks in 2007, during which 10 mountain gorillas were killed.A rebel offensive last month forced the rangers to...

Park officials in East Congo said on Monday that conflict has put more than a quarter of the world's last mountain gorillas at the mercy of armed groups who hunt and camp in their territory.  The gorillas now face even greater extinction because no rangers are left to protect or care for them.Recent conflicts between Tutsi rebels and the government army and militia allies have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, which is home to...

Text of report in English by Innocent Gahigana entitled "Rwandan wins global conservation award" published by Rwandan newspaper The New Times website on 3 September A Rwandan ecologist, Edwin Sabuhoro, 35, has earned himself a global Young Conservationist Award for his self-driven conservation efforts. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas and the International Ranger Federation (IRF) announced the award last week The news about...

For so long now, there has been almost nothing but bad news about the likely fate of gorillas. They have been the victims of deforestation and incessant warfare in Central Africa. They have been hunted for meat. They are susceptible to the Ebola virus. Estimates in the 1980s suggested that there were roughly 100,000 western lowland gorillas - one of four subspecies. Since then, that number was thought to have declined by half. But a rigorous new census of western lowland gorillas conducted...

By Andrew C. Revkin A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations. As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world's largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations - estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s - had been...

Text of report in English by Martin Tindiwensi entitled "United States to support mountain gorilla conservation" published by Rwandan newspaper The New Times website on 16 July Rubavu [western province]: The United States Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment and Science, Claudia A. McMurray, has said that her government will continue to support the conservation of the unique species of mountain gorillas found in the Virunga Mountains. McMurray said this while at a two-day...