By Dan Bucknell
On the 24th September, we celebrate “World Gorilla Day”, an opportunity to shine a spotlight on a species that doesn’t often hit the news in the way others do and one that many may not automatically think of as one that Tusk helps to protect.
When gorillas are in the news, it’s often a positive story about an increase in the number of mountain gorillas, and mountain gorilla conservation is regularly touted as a rare story of conservation success. Nevertheless, the other subspecies of gorilla are not faring so well, and even mountain gorillas’ long-term future is not guaranteed.
There are four subspecies of gorilla: the eastern gorilla species is divided into mountain gorillas and eastern lowland (or Grauer’s) gorillas; western gorillas include the western lowland and Cross River gorillas.
In the early 1980s, the mountain gorilla population was at an all-time low. In 1981, the population on the slopes of the Virunga Volcanoes numbered 250. The other population in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest just to the north was unknown but could have been fewer in number than the Virunga groups. Since then, concerted international conservation efforts and the success of gorilla tourism have more than doubled their numbers, with the Virunga population up to 604 at the last count and those in Bwindi at 459, for a total of 1,063. The next count is expected to show further increases.
Throughout my career, I have been privileged enough to have visited the mountain gorillas on a number of occasions to see this success story for myself. Visiting these habituated gorillas doesn’t feel exploitative or an invasion of their privacy. It can't, of course, be as memorable for them as it is for humans, making it a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but it still seems as if many of the gorillas are intrigued to see who is coming to visit them.
Nevertheless, I have also witnessed how human greed could so easily tip the balance and turn this success story into a potential disaster. The price tag to see the gorillas has increased significantly over the years and the size of the tourist group allowed to visit has also increased slightly. In addition, when in their habitat, it’s not always easy—or sometimes even possible—to enforce the minimum distance that must be observed between the visitors and the gorillas. Gorillas go where they please! At least now visitors are required to wear face masks, but the risk of a communicable disease jumping to the gorillas is always a danger and one that could have calamitous consequences for a close relative of ours that lacks the levels of immunity we have acquired.
For this reason, the gorillas’ health is carefully monitored by groups such as Tusk Partner Conservation Through Public Health, who also work with the local communities to support their health and that of their livestock around Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. They were deeply concerned that COVID might have entered the gorilla population, which fortunately didn’t come to pass.
Meanwhile, Ebola has already shown itself to be one of the greatest threats to western lowland gorillas, reducing the gorilla population by approximately one-third and killing 56–98% of populations at study sites near human outbreak zones. Unless vaccinated, recent models suggest that an outbreak in the mountain gorillas could infect 85–87% of the gorillas, only 6% of which would likely recover and survive.
Western lowland gorillas are otherwise the most numerous of all gorilla subspecies, with perhaps as many as 300,000 in and around the Congo Basin, but in a population that is declining fast, at an annual rate of 2.7%, due to disease, as well as poaching for bushmeat and habitat loss and degradation.
Eastern lowland gorillas face much the same threats, all compounded by the high levels of political insecurity in and around their forest homes in eastern DR Congo. Their numbers were decimated at the turn of the century as a scramble to mine coltan (to provide a mineral used in mobile phones and other technology that was booming at the time) saw people rush into their habitat and kill the gorillas for the meat. Their population is now estimated at 6,800, down from 17,000 in the 1990s.
Finally, the little-known Cross River gorilla of the Nigeria-Cameroon border is the rarest of them all, with as few as 250–300 scattered across the region’s highland forests, which they share with the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee and drill monkey. These species are all severely threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as hunting for their meat.
In light of the above, all gorillas are considered either endangered or critically endangered, and if the outlook wasn’t bad enough, the threats to their future survival could be further exacerbated by the impacts of climate change on their fragile forest homes. Yet protecting them and other keystone species that eat fruit and disperse large seeds is a key element in the fight against climate change, with recent research showing that the loss of these species makes forests less able to store or sequester carbon.
Tusk has worked for over 30 years to champion the benefits of gorilla conservation. Our latest venture is the Tusk Gorilla Trail in Covent Garden, in partnership with Shaftesbury Capital and curated by Chris Westbrook. The trail of life-sized gorilla sculptures, created by prominent artists and Tusk Ambassadors, aims to draw greater attention to the very mixed fortunes of gorillas across Africa and raise some much-needed funds to secure their future. If you’ve not yet had the chance to visit the gorilla sculptures, time is running out for them too: You have until 12th October to see them in all their glory. They will then be auctioned off, with the proceeds going towards Tusk’s conservation projects. Visit the Tusk website for more information on how to see them, donate, or even bid in the auction!
