The population of the world’s largest primate — a gorilla that lives in a region of Central Africa beset by conflict — is collapsing.
In 1998, researchers estimated that 17,000 Grauer’s gorillas, also known as eastern lowland gorillas, lived in the forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, the population of Grauer’s gorillas has dropped by 77 percent. Fewer than 3,800 of these gorillas still live in the wild, according to a report by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Flora and Fauna International and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature.
The gorillas have been affected by civil war, the establishment of mining camps to fund militias, and subsistence and bushmeat hunting to feed miners, according to the report.
The recent conflicts in the country began in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when refugees poured into Eastern DRC. An estimated 5 million people died in Congolese civil wars.
“The crash in the gorilla population is a consequence of the human tragedy that has played out in Eastern DRC,” report co-author Jefferson Hall, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said in a statement.
Just as humans have been affected, so too has the region’s wildlife. The mineral-rich area has seen a rapid expansion of subsistence mining. And while the Grauer’s gorilla is legally protected, it’s still hunted. The gorilla’s size — some weigh more than 400 pounds and stand more than 5 feet tall — means one kill can feed many miners.
The Grauer’s gorilla’s range “has been consumed in conflict” since 1996, according to the report. “This has resulted in an almost complete breakdown of government control, including wildlife protection activities.”
Grauer’s gorillas are closely related to mountain gorillas. They animals live in parts of the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda, in a region called Africa’s Western Rift Valley. Fewer than 700 such gorillas are thought to live in the wild, and rangers in Congo’s Virunga National Park face attacks from rebels and poachers as they try to protect the endangered animals. More than 150 rangers have been killed in the previous two decades.
“We have seen, over and over again, dedicated Congolese conservationists risk their lives to make a difference,” said Hall.
The Grauer’s gorilla has been categorized as “endangered” since the 1980s on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. Given the new population estimate, the report authors recommend listing the gorilla as “critically endangered,” or one step below “extinct in the wild.”
To stop the dwindling gorilla numbers, conservationists say, it will take regulating subsistence mines and disarming miners; increasing security where the gorillas live; adding new protected areas and giving more support for existing protected lands; launching public education campaigns; and focusing on economic development so locals have viable alternatives to mining.
