A new blog follows gorilla conservationists deep into the primeval forests of Africa"A mama with her tiny baby is on guard on top of the adjacent hill to chase away raiding baboons, elephants and other hungry forest inhabitants bold enough to venture outside their verdant home. A long necked heron elegantly soars above us. I still feel a little weak at the knees. But it is a good weakness: equal parts exhilaration and satisfaction."
So goes a recent entry on Tracking Mountain Gorillas, a new blog launched on March 10 by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), the leading international conservation organization focused solely on Africa, and the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), a group dedicated to saving endangered mountain gorillas and their forest habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda.
Tracking Mountain Gorillas follows IGCP staff (in the above case, Communications Officer Jamie Kemsey) and park rangers as they track various mountain gorilla family groups and share the progress of conservation efforts, which include local community projects such as mushroom farming in the DRC, a women’s basket weaving cooperative in Rwanda and a beekeeping business in Uganda.
Gorillas are the world's largest living primates. Genetically speaking, they are 98% similar to humans. After chimpanzees, they are our closest living relatives, a closeness also evidenced by their high level of intelligence: A gorilla named Koko learned more than 1,000 signs in American Sign Language.
Approximately 50,000 western lowland gorillas currently live in West central Africa. Only about 2,500 eastern lowland gorilla remain in the wild, with less than 50 in zoos. But the mountain gorillas who live in the Virunga mountains in East central Africa are the most endangered of the subspecies, with only about 700 individuals left in the world, all in the wild: No mountain gorillas exist in captivity. They are in serious danger of becoming extinct.
Both gorilla species -- Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and Eastern Gorilla (Gorilla beringei) -- have been endangered for many years due to poaching, diseases like the Ebola virus and habitat destruction from slash-and-burn agriculture and armed conflict.
In an effort to prevent a gorilla extinction, 2009 was named the Year of the Gorilla by the United Nations Environment Programme Convention on Migratory Species (UNEP-CMS), the UNEP/UNESCO Great Ape Survival Partnership (GRASP) and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA).
GET INVOLVED
- Support the Year of the Gorilla
- Adopt a group of mountain gorillas from the African Wildlife Foundation for $75
- Adopt Charles, a 17 year-old mountain gorilla who leads a family of seven, from the African Wildlife Foundation for $25
- Donate to Koko's Gorilla Foundation
- Sign a Care2 petition urging Congo's Ministry of Environment to protect gorilla habitats from deforestation
- Gorilla Baby Boom in DR Congo (February 4, 2009)
- Turning Gorilla Poachers Into Eco-Tourism Guides (September 25, 2008)
- Mountain Gorilla Conservation Pact Begins (July 2, 2008)
- Congo Ranger Arrested for Killing Gorillas (March 19, 2008)
- Mountain Gorillas Drunk on Bamboo Sap Photographed (News.com.au, March 23, 2009)
- Jane Goodall's Mobile Phone Program to Help Gorillas A Success (The Age, March 22, 2009)
- 35-Year-Old Gorilla Dies in North Carolina Zoo (MSNBC, March 19, 2009)
- Zoo's Gorillas Get Heart Checkup (Kansas.com, March 15, 2009)
- San Francisco Zoo's Gorilla Baby Gets A Name (Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2009)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment