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Western lowland gorilla.© Ian Redmond/Ape Alliance |
The critically endangered western lowland gorilla of Africa has been disappearing before our eyes over the past few decades. Deforestation, the Ebola virus, and poaching have cut the gorilla population number in half since the 1980s to a mere 50,000 individuals, according to some estimates. However, in August 2008, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) concluded a research survey which found the western lowland gorilla population to be much larger—near 200,000 animals.
Surveyors Amazed
WCS conducted their study over two years, 2006-2007, in remote swamplands of central Africa. According to CNN, the WCS surveyors were acting on a tip from hunters who had encountered gorillas in a vast area of swamp forest in the northern Republic of the Congo when they found what they told CNN was “an astonishing amount of gorillas.” The astonishing amount turned out to be more than 125,000 gorillas; this estimate is based on the numbers of gorilla nests they found. Gorillas make nests every night to sleep in, and researchers observed these, careful not to count old nests in the census.
Still Critically Endangered
“This is not, as some have reported it, a population increase,” says Ian Redmond, Chairman of Ape Alliance, an international ape welfare and conservation coalition of which HSI is a member. “It is a readjustment of our estimate of the western lowland gorilla population, and despite it, the IUCN Primate Specialist Group still accorded the western lowland gorillas ‘Critically Endangered’ status in the recent assessment because of the known decline in other areas.” Redmond also says that such high densities of gorillas in this previously uncounted area make the populations vulnerable to Ebola outbreaks. Ebola, a deadly hemorrhagic fever, has already had devastating impacts on some populations of western lowland gorillas. Smaller, more isolated populations of gorillas are less likely to be exposed to Ebola.
Numerous Threats to Survival
On top of the ever-lingering threat of the Ebola virus, there is concern that the international attention being brought to the newly found gorillas will alert poachers of their locations. Poaching is one of the biggest threats to western lowland gorillas and has already been facilitated by logging. Land clearing for agriculture and road building through forests to haul out logs allow poachers to have access to remote gorilla populations that they wouldn’t have been able to access before. In addition, deforestation has caused suitable habitat for the gorillas to disappear. Now that the locations of large numbers of gorillas are known, more must be done to make sure they are protected.
While the news of newly discovered western lowland gorilla populations is indeed welcomed, it must also be realized that this does not mean that gorillas are no longer threatened. “All this news does is move the downward sloping population graph up by 100,000, but if it still remains downward sloping, it will still hit zero unless the trend is reversed—just a few years later than previously predicted,” says Redmond. Though extinction still looms on the horizon for western lowland gorillas, this new discovery allots them more time to survive. It also gives us more time to reverse the downward trend; if we fail, a little more time may be all they can hope for.
