Scientists Find 125,000 “New” Gorillas

Yesterday, the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society [WCS] announced that it has discovered 125,000 or so Western lowland gorillas living in a swamp in equatorial Africa. Western lowland gorillas are listed as critically endangered, the highest threat category for a species. An extra eighth of a million should help keep them around.

Hugo Rainey, one of the researchers who conducted the survey for the WCS, said that his team had acted on a tip from hunters. Dr. Rainey said that the researchers trekked on foot through mud for three days to the outskirts of Lac Tele, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the nearest road. “When we went there, we found an astonishing amount of gorillas,” said Dr. Rainey, speaking from the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Counting gorillas isn’t all that easy. The team had to deduce the number in the area based on the number of gorilla nests they found. Each gorilla makes a nest to sleep in each night. They found so many that Dr. Rainey said, “This is the highest-known density of gorillas that's ever been found.”

The WCS said in its announcement “a combination of factors led to such high numbers of gorillas including: successful long-term conservation management of the Republic of Congo's protected areas; remoteness and inaccessibility of some of the key locations where the gorillas were found; and a food-rich habitat, particularly in some of the swamp forests and the herb-rich ‘Marantaceae’ forests.”

Overall, though, the future is bleak for primates. Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature have issued a report that claims 50% of the primates in the world (excluding that odd species, homo sapiens) are at risk. In Asia, that rises to 70%. Habitat loss and disease (such as Ebola) are the culprits. So, the 125,000 extra gorillas will come in handy, if that odd species does right by them.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home