I'd been meaning to write about this, but got caught up in all the political drama.
While there remains a dire situation for many primate species, for lowland gorillas, there's some surprisingly good news:
A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations.
As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world’s largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations — estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s — had been devastated by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola virus. The three other subspecies are either critically endangered or endangered.
The survey was conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society and local researchers in largely unstudied terrain, including a swampy region nicknamed the “green abyss” by the first biologists to cross it. Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, the president of the society, marveled at the scope of what the survey revealed. “The message from our community is so often one of despair,” he said. “While we don’t want to relax our concern, it’s just great to discover that these animals are doing well.”
The society is to release its findings on Tuesday at a meeting of the International Primatological Society in Edinburgh. Conservation society scientists said the continuing threat of Ebola precluded a change in the gorilla’s status. But the discovery was mainly stirring excitement.
“This is the light of hope you look for,” said Richard G. Ruggerio, a conservation biologist at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But he cautioned that the large gorilla populations in the two studied tracts, which cover 18,000 square miles, should not lead to complacency. “It’s a different kind of alarm call, an opportunity that is increasingly rare on this planet — to do something before there’s a crisis,” he said. A separate global update on primates is being issued Tuesday at the Edinburgh meeting, showing that — with a few exceptions — forest destruction and, increasingly, hunting for meat, pets and Chinese medicinal products are imperiling monkeys and other primates, from Congo Republic to Cambodia.
In Vietnam and Cambodia, 90 percent of primates — including gibbons, leaf monkeys and langurs — are considered at risk, said scientists affiliated with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which issued the update with Conservation International.
