Mountain Gorilla
Tagged: animal, animals, cat, invertebrateGorilla gorilla beringei ( images )
The mountain gorilla is the world’s largest primate, but despite its huge size and obvious strength, it is also one of the gentlest. After years of intensive conservation efforts Africa’s mountain gorilla population seemed to be overcoming the threat of extinction. However, civil war in the region has since undone much of the progress that had been made. Mountain gorillas are particularly vulnerable to environmental pressures, both natural and man-made, because of their slow breeding rate, which makes it difficult for them to replenish their numbers. Usually only one baby is born at a time; but on the rare occasions when twins occur, one almost always dies. Most female gorillas do not breed until they are at least 10. A female can bear young every four years; but because many infants die before they are two, the rate for successful reproduction is closer to one every eight years. Even a female living in exceptionally favorable conditions is unlikely to rear more than six offspring in her 40-year lifetime. It is more likely that she will raise between two and four young. The young are not fully weaned until the age of three and remain with their mothers for several more years.
Major Threats
The major problems facing the mountain gorilla in the mid-20Th century were poaching, kidnapping, and habitat loss. Such problems can be prevented by setting aside areas of gorilla habitat and patrolling them to prevent hunting. Such refuges did exist, but the protection provided in the past was nowhere near adequate. Many hundreds were still illegally caught in snares, their flesh sold as bush meat, and their heads, hands, and feet made into trophies and tourist souvenirs. There was also a thriving market in live baby gorillas, a trade made all the more abhorrent by the fact that poachers usually killed the mother, or the entire family, to kidnap one baby. Mountain gorillas do not cope well with captivity-those seen in zoos are of the lowland variety-and few kidnapped youngsters survive. Huge areas of mountain gorilla habitat were lost to cultivation in the 1 950s and 1960s. The matter came to a head in 1968 when a single refuge, representing 40 percent of the gorillas’ remaining habitat, was turned over to agriculture.
Changing Fortunes
By the late 1960s it was clear that if mountain gorillas were to escape extinction, both the animals and their shrinking habitat needed proper protection. For two decades this was provided, and at the end of the 1980s the mountain gorilla’s prospects were looking much brighter. The Rwandan gorilla population had increased by over 20 percent; special reserves gave them a secure habitat, and an intensive education program helped local people realize the value of their great ape neighbors. The gorillas became a national treasure and the focus of a lucrative ecotourism industry, which in 1990 ranked as Rwanda’s third highest source of income. Similar projects were also reaping benefits in neighboring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Ecotourism brings in money, and the presence of visitors makes it more difficult for poachers to operate unseen, but the visitors also bring disease. Gorillas are susceptible to human infections, and there is a risk of passing on flu viruses and other germs to the animals when tourists visit the forests. In the early 1990s civil war in Rwanda claimed the lives of half a million people and left 750,000 homeless. Not surprisingly the conservation of Rwanda’s mountain gorillas slipped down the list of national priorities. Conservationists stayed to protect the gorillas but were eventually evacuated. The refugee crisis caused by the war has put huge pressure on the land, and the protected status of the gorilla’s habitat is again under threat; there simply is not enough room to accommodate both the gorillas and the thousands of people in need of land.
Statistics
Mountain gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla beringei )
- Family: Pongidae
- World population: Fewer than 600
- Distribution: Mountains linking the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, eastern Africa
- Habitat: Cloud forests on volcanic slopes at 5,450-12,500 ft (1,650-3,800 m)
- Size: Height: 5-9 ft (1.5-1.8 m); male up to twice the size of female. Weight: 154-440 lb (70-200 kg)
- Form: Large, powerful ape. Dark brown-black hair, longer than that of lowland gorilla. Walks on all fours using soles of feet and knuckles of hands; arms shorter than those of lowland gorilla. Dominant males very large with silvery hair on back
- Diet: Leaves, roots, and shoots; some bark, flowers, fruit, fungi; occasionally invertebrates and even dung
- Breeding: Single young born at any time of year after 8-month gestation; births at intervals of at least 4 years; young weaned at 3 years; mature at 10 years (female) or 15 years (male). Life span up to 40 years in wild
- Related endangered species: Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla); eastern lowland gorilla (G. g. graueri); chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes); pygmy chimpanzee (PP paniscus); orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus)
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