Some good news:
Census: Rare Mountain Gorillas Less Rare
Sat Jan 17, 3:09 PM ET
By RODRIQUE NGOWI, Associated Press Writer
KIGALI, Rwanda - The number of rare mountain gorillas living in central Africa has increased by 17 percent during the past 15 years, despite conflict in the region, poaching and human incursions into the animals' habitat, a Rwandan wildlife official said Saturday.
AP Photo
A recent census shows the number of endangered primates living in a mountain range straddling Rwanda, Congo, and Uganda has grown to 380 from 324 in 1989 when the last census was conducted, said Fidel Ruzigandekwe, of the Rwandan National Parks and Tourism Authority.
"The mountain gorilla is a threatened species, and the increase in their number is great news for us and good news for the rest of the world," Ruzigandekwe told The Associated Press. "The few additional gorilla individuals add to the genetic pool of the species."
He said the increase of the gorillas was due to effective conservation programs. The animals were made famous by the movie "Gorillas in the Mist" about Dian Fossey, who studied them in northeastern Rwanda in the 1960s and documented her work in a book by the same name.
The census was conducted late last year by Rwandan, Ugandan and Congolese wildlife experts. They began last September in Mgahinga Game Park, southwestern Uganda, then moved to Virunga Park in neighboring eastern Congo, and completed the count in the Volcanoes National Park.
A census is normally conducted every five years, but warfare in the region has made that impossible. Congo has been beset by a 4 1/2-year civil war; more than 500,000 people, mainly minority Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus, were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; and Ugandan rebels have been active in the border area between Uganda and eastern Congo.
"Given the decade-long political strife in the region, it is remarkable that the mountain gorilla population has nevertheless fared well — and even experienced some growth," said Dieter Steklis, chief scientist and vice president of Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.
"This is strong testimony to the effectiveness of the dedicated, near round-the-clock, on-the-ground protection" provided by park authorities and conservationists, he said in a statement.
The fund and other international conservation groups helped finance the census.
In the past, experts estimated there were 670 mountain gorillas in the wild, including more than 300 gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Park in southwestern Uganda.
The census, however, did not include Bwindi's gorillas because it is believed they are of a different subspecies, the Dian Fossey fund said in a statement.
The African wildlife experts conducting the census traversed the region searching for signs of gorilla trails, dung and trampled vegetation, officials said. On finding a trail, they would follow it to nests and estimate the size of the group by counting nests and measuring dung size.
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