Congo Gorilla Population Has ‘Baby Boom’ Amid Unrest
2009-01-27 14:25:34.87 GMT
By Alex Morales
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s mountain gorilla population grew by almost 13 percent in what one primate expert called a “baby boom” even as a rebel conflict forced rangers to flee the park.
Mountain gorillas inhabiting Virunga National Park that are considered tame increased to 81 this month from 72 in 2007, the park said in a report. The rise occurred as rangers fled the world’s second-oldest national park after Yellowstone amid fighting between the Congolese army and rebels loyal to Laurent Nkunda, who was captured last week in neighboring Rwanda.
“When there’s very intense fighting as there has been in the past 15 months, there is the possibility of gorillas being killed,” Park Director Emmanuel de Merode said today in a telephone interview from Rumangabo, eastern Congo. Instead, “there’s been an unusually high number of births and we’re extremely pleased about it. It’s a postwar baby boom.”
Poaching remains a threat to the primates, with rangers discovering an “unusually high number” of snares, de Merode said.
Last year, 10 gorillas were killed in four incidents after clashes between government forces and rebels took place in Virunga.
The preserve, Africa’s most biologically diverse and a habitat for the primates made famous by Dian Fossey in “Gorillas in the Mist,” also shelters African elephants sought by poachers for ivory.
About 150 rangers at Virunga and four other parks in eastern Congo have been killed over the past 10 years amid the civil war, according to Congolese authorities.
Conservationists’ Red List
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which compiles the Red List of threatened species, last year held off changing the status of mountain gorillas to endangered from critically endangered because of unrest in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
The latest survey was carried out from Nov. 25 to Jan. 22.
Gorillas are termed either habituated, meaning they are docile in the presence of humans, or unhabituated, meaning they aren’t, de Merode said. Counting the second category isn’t precise, and rangers estimate there are about 120 in Virunga, de Merode said.
About 720 mountain gorillas, whose latin name is Gorilla beringei, remain in the world, according to park authorities. That includes habituated and unhabituated animals. The rising numbers of tame gorillas may be representative of the entire population.
“The population of habituated gorillas is a very good indication of the gorilla population as a whole,” de Merode said.
“Habituated gorillas are the most vulnerable. They’re on the forest boundary so they’re much more exposed.” |
