There are now over 1,000 mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the wild for the first time in half a century
I’m sure all of you are already familiar with the eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei), but what most people don’t realize is just how few of them there are left. This great ape has two distinct subspecies; the Eastern lowland gorilla (G. beringei graueri) and the mountain gorilla (G. beringei beringei). There are only a few differences between the two subspecies, and the main one is where they prefer to live. I will let you take a look at their names and figure that out for yourself though.
A female mountain gorilla eating a leaf. Image by Charles J Sharp, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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In this post we're going to be taking a closer look at the mountain gorilla, the subspecies of Eastern gorilla that is by far the most threatened, and is considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List. This pretty much means that it has a very high chance of going extinct in the near future, and needs conservation efforts to survive.
The mountain gorilla is only found in two different places in Africa, with each area having a distinct population. One of these are in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, and is the home to an estimated 400 mountain gorillas. The other mountain gorillas live in Virunga National Part, a transbordering massif that is located in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. A recent consensus in this Virunga massif showed that there were a total of 604 mountain gorillas in this area, pushing the total population of all mountain gorillas just over 1,000 individuals for the first time in several decades.
Population trends in the mountain gorillas
It does feel pretty strange to celebrate that there are just over a thousand mountain gorillas left in the wild, but this is a great number compared to how it has been. Back in 1981, surveys showed that there was only around 250 gorillas in the Virunga population, and since there has historically been less gorillas in the Bwindi population, we can assume that there was less than 500 mountain gorillas left. This is a terrible number for any species, and it might not have been able to survive any lower numbers.
Luckily the trend reversed, and we are currently seeing a (small) population increase. The increase is pretty slow, and in Virunga it has been measured to be an average growth rate of 3.7% per annum. Despite being a rather slow increase, it’s not lower than expected due to the fact that gorillas are typical k-selected organisms, meaning that they will have few offspring that they take care off for a long time.
A young mountain gorilla in Virunga. Image by Cai Tjeenk Willink, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
How the mountain gorillas ended up in such a bad spot
At this point it seems like the mountain gorillas are getting to a better place, but they are still far away from being out of the danger zone of potential extinction. To understand the potential problems the gorillas face, we will be looking back at what caused their endangerment in the first place, and see which of the problems that still persists.
1) Poaching
You might not think of the mountain gorilla as a typical animal that gets poached, but this is in fact a huge threat to them. While the grown gorillas themselves rarely gets poached for their meat, head (as a trophy), or skin, they do often end up in traps that have been put out there to hunt other animal, so they are really a by-catch of people who trap animals for food. The biggest problem is snares, and while park rangers are trained to look for and destroy these, finding all of them has proven very difficult.
Young gorillas are much more valuable to poachers, and these will sometimes get directly poached. In contrast to other African animals such as elephants or rhinos, they are not killed for their organs or products, but rather caught alive to be sold to collectors and private zoos. Infant gorillas are particularly wanted, so the park rangers focus extra effort into protecting these.
In total, the poaching is a big threat, but not the only one that matter. Most grown gorillas are pretty safe from poachers, unless they are guarding the infants that get poached. However, all mountain gorillas live inside national parks, so poaching is obviously a whole lot more difficult now that there are rangers that protect them.
2) Disease
Disease has actually been a big threat for the mountain gorillas in the last few decades, and again we humans are to blame. The problem is that the mountain gorillas get sick after being in contact with tourists that get a little too close. There are laws within the parks that tell people to be at least 7 meters away from the gorillas at all times, but these obviously gets broken by tourists who want to get a great photo of them.
The gorillas are also occasionally in contact with cattle and other farm animals, which has also shown to be transmitting disease to the gorillas.
The best solution is to limit the tourism to the parks, but this will also have negative consequences, since the parks and conservation groups then will get less money to spend on their projects.
3) Habitat loss and habitat fragmentation
Like most other endangered animals, the mountain gorillas are also affected by habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. Basically their original habitat range has shrunk after humans began to occupy more area in the last century, so they are now confined to areas that are rather small compared to their historical range.
Keep in mind that their habitat is not only directly lost because of people who settle down there; it’s also lost because of the use of “slash and burn” agriculture that provides farmers with fertile soil by burning down the forest, then abandoning it after a few years once the soil has used all its nutrients. This has created a lot of barren land that were previously dense jungle, and this is obviously unusable by the mountain gorillas, or any other animals that live in the forest.
The aftermath of a “slash and burn” farm in Kimpese, Democratic Republic of Congo. Image by Max.kit, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Habitat fragmentation if the effect of human interaction creating isolated populations of the mountain gorillas, because the gorillas will rarely travel across a human settlement or a big farm areas to reach other gorillas populations. The result of this is that there is less migration between the different populations, and each population will be isolated from each other. Over this this will reduce the genetic diversity, and give the different populations less potential to adapt to environmental changes.
While loss of genetic diversity can be a huge problem, the immediate danger of habitat loss is considered to be a bigger threat that could potentially lead to their extinction in the near future.
4) War and civil unrest
Neither Rwanda, Uganda, or the Democratic Republic of Congo are the most politically stable countries in the world, and this has certainly had a very negative effect on the mountain gorilla population. The wars had both had a direct effect with gorillas being killed for meat, killed by rebel groups for fun, or being killed by land mines, or indirect effects that comes from the lack of stable governments that could coordinate a conservation effort.
During time of war in these countries, gorilla habitat has typically been lost when refugees escaped from armed forces and sought shelter in the woods. Not only was there a direct conflict, the refugees would also cut down a lot of wood to create firewood and basic structures. I’m in no way judging refugees, but it’s still an important part of what lead to the decline of mountain gorilla population.
Will there be a future for mountain gorillas?
As you have seen, there are lots of different threats to the mountain gorillas, but despite this the populations has seen a rise in the last few decades. Right now the issues with habitat loss and disease from humans seem to be the biggest threats that could potentially drive the species to extinction, so we can hope that there will be stricter regulations for this in the future.
There are many different conservation groups that work on protection the mountain gorillas, so it’s not a lack of people who try. If things keep going in this direction we might be able to get a healthy population in the next three or four decades, but it will require a lot of money and effort.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for reading my post about the mountain gorilla, its threats, and the news that it has finally got a population that is over 1,000 individuals. I hope you enjoyed it, and please leave a comment with your thoughts below!
The sources for the threats to the mountain gorillas are from various conservation groups such as WWF’s profile for the mountain gorillas, the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, and the Virunga National Park’s website. The other sources have been made as clickable links directly in the text where they are relevant.
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Do you not think that we must accept that some species will become extinct due to natural selection, and within that, and sadly, due to humans part in the natural world?
The whole natural world is driven by the food chain which of course we sit atop, also giving us responsibility for what goes on below us, but how much should we be protecting our own species as a priority ?
Its all a difficult balancing act especially as 1st world citizens who have what we have through aggressive industrialisation and now preaching conservation to people with almost nothing.
That's an interesting question. There are surely some species that will go extinct due to natural causes, and this is known as the background extinction rate. There are a lot of debate as to which number is the correct one, but here are some numbers that can be used. As you can see, the numbers are generally low, such as if we had 1 million mammals, one would go extinct each year. However, we only have around 6,500 species, so we should theoretically only see one of them go extinct every 150 years or so.
The point I'm trying to make is that the real natural extinction rate is very, very low, so we should absolutely do our best to prevent the extinction of these animals. At least that's my opinion :)
I agree, we nees to protect our natural world. There was an interesting article on BBC today about endangered mammels in UK. Very sad as its not like we have much wild life here to lose. Red Squirrels were mentioned and we ve been fighting to save them for years after the imported grey squirrels took over.
Wow, I had no idea that grey squirrel is taking over for red squirrels in the UK! That's actually pretty crazy. At least they are abundant in most other parts of Europe, so there's always the possibility of reintroducing them if they are unable to save them in the first place.
I didn't know they were on an upward trajectory. That's a nice change from the usual news, even if there's still a long way to go.
I appreciate you differentiating between habitat loss and fragmentation. A lot of the conservation efforts near me have a good amount of total land area but are really held back by fragmentation. Even something so simple as a dirt road or power line corridor can be bad for some species.
Clearly, one likes living in beringei and the other in graueri.
Habitat fragmentation can be a huge problem for many species. Here in Norway we have seen the consequences of this with the wild reindeer where the government built a road that divides their summer and winter habitat. They only cross this twice a year, so the government argued that they would cross if they only shut down the traffic when the reindeer wanted to cross. Turns out that they very rare even get close to the road, so now they're stuck on only one side of it, even though the other habitat is still mostly pristine. And I'm sure this is a big problem for many other animals that travels outside of their primary habitat as well.
Nice post brother. Very detailed and informative. We can only hope that the population continues to grow.
Thanks. Yeah, hopefully it will keep growing in the next decades.
This is great news! I havent been following the mountain gorilla situation as closely as some other survival fights in the animal kindom so I am nicely surprised :) But like you said, it will still take tons of money, time, energy and dedication to get their population where we want to see it.
A positive surprise is a rare treat when you like conservation biology and biodiversity ;) Hehe
One of my main concerns is the future of the political stability in the countries who host the mountain gorillas. I don't know a lot about the politics there, but if they are headed for more war, then the gorillas might not do so fine after all.
Oh yeah, that is a good point. I think the aspect of wars and conflicts is often underestimated when it comes to wildlife conversation. And obviously, it is a big issue in many African countries these days. But yeah, this is positive and promising info you shared here with us. The future of mountain gorillas look better than, for example, that of orangutans. I posted an article about them a few days ago, their population on Borneo is dwindling to disturbing levels :(
I must have missed that post! Going to check it out now. The orangutans seem to be in a very bad place, and from what I understand, the problems they are facing with illegal logging that is destroying their habitat is even accelerating and increasing.
Love this post about mountain gorillas! Though we don't have any gorillas in our area of Peru, there are lots of endangered species that we as an environmental sustainability organization are working to protect on the coast of northern Peru. We just joined SteemIt, and we're looking forward to engaging with more ecologists!
Thanks! Welcome to Steem then :) I don't know a lot about the ecology in Peru, so I'm looking forward to seeing your post.
Great to see an increasing population trend.
But it's too early to celebrate.... continuing efforts for coming 2-3 decades will generate significant results:)
Those park rangers need to continue the good work...
Yep, there's still a long of things that can go wrong before this species will be considered safe, so we have to keep up all the conservation efforts.
They don't look total 'vegan' to me but I think they are.
Yeah, they are indeed. Some of them do eat a few insects though, but this is very rare.
Not an extinction again.. But atleast the numbers are increasing and that is a good sign...
When will we care.. I wonder...
Hopefully this one will make it. If everything keeps going this way, it won't be a problem, but who knows what will happen in the next few years?
We must keep animals from extinction
Really great article done well
Thank you. Yes, we must do our best to keep it from extinction.
When a female mountain gorilla eating a leaf looks so beautiful. His black clr and black brown are look so energatic. The future of mountain gorilla are looking not well. But its all depends on the desciplines by the goverment policies for forest.
Yeah, she's really good-looking indeed!