Endangered Gorillas by Carl R. Green

Author:Carl R. Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC

chapter four

SAVING GORILLAS

Conservationist George Schaller is a recognized biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based at the Bronx Zoo in New York. He has traveled to Africa to study the great apes up close. While he learned to love gorillas during the early 1960s, he also worried about their future. There were many dangers: loss of habitat, disease, poaching, civil wars, and the bushmeat trade. He knew these threats were a recipe for extinction. Schaller voiced his concerns with these words:

Sadly, the most important fact we have learned about gorillas in recent years is that if humankind wishes to share this planet with the apes in centuries to come we can never ignore their existence, falter in vigilance, or fail in total commitment. We must cherish and protect the gorillas forevermore.1

Today’s naturalists add a footnote to Schaller’s plea. Gorillas, they remind us, are a vital part of Africa’s ecology. The daily act of eating many kinds of plants helps keep the rainforest healthy. The seed-laden dung dropped by gorillas sprouts useful plants wherever they wander. Even so, gorillas remain on the endangered list. The war to save them dates back almost one hundred years.

Carl Akeley and Dian Fossey

Early explorers shot gorillas on sight. Some pulled the trigger because they feared an attack. Others wanted trophies for themselves or to be displayed in museums. In the 1920s, naturalist Carl Akeley visited the Virunga Volcanoes to collect specimens. The payoff was a display of mountain gorillas that still attracts visitors to the American Museum of Natural History. After that bloody start, Akeley turned into a gorilla protector. He became a prime mover behind the creation of Albert National Park. Today, the old preserve is divided into three national parks. One belongs to Rwanda, one to Uganda, and one to the Congo. Akeley died of malaria in 1926 and was buried in a Virunga meadow.2

Dian Fossey began by studying mountain gorillas in the Virungas. She ended up as their friend and guardian. As Fossey warmed to her task, she took great lengths to protect “her” gorillas. She cut traplines. She herded gorillas away from areas where poachers set their snares. After a poacher shot Digit, her much-loved silverback, she set up the Digit Fund. The money raised by the fund helped pay for antipoaching patrols.3 In 1984 alone, the patrols destroyed more than two thousand snares. A decade later, that number was down to 941 snares. But a civil war in Rwanda had also started and led to an increase in illegal activity. Somehow, the gorillas survived these years during the civil war in good condition even though there were more snares set by poachers.

Fast Fact!

In 2012, young mountain gorillas were observed dismantling snares left by poachers. These smart four-year-olds destroyed the traps in their forest home in Rwanda by breaking the branch that was holding a noose.

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