![]() ![]() The vets monitor wounds and signs of respiratory infections, but they intervene only sparingly. Later, Hirwa informed the chief park warden and the staff at Gorillas Doctors, a nongovernmental group whose veterinarians work in the forest. Most likely, he surmised, Pato had been jousting with the family's second silverback for control of the group. ![]() Hirwa noticed a fresh wound on Pato's chest, a small red slash. "Not every silverback will do that, will pay attention to the infants," Hirwa says. Pato sat beside her and ran his long fingers through her fur, grooming her, looking for insects or other things caught in her glossy black coat. He watched as the silverback, a 19-year-old named Pato, walked on all fours toward a squirming infant gorilla, Macibiri. Their strength and chest-thumping displays are generally reserved for contests between male rivals. Once depicted in legends and films like "King Kong" as fearsome beasts, gorillas are actually languid primates that eat only plants and insects, and live in fairly stable, extended family groups. 2, 2019 photo, a silverback mountain gorilla named Segasira lies under a tree in the Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. "But their numbers are now growing, and that's remarkable." "The population of mountain gorillas is still vulnerable," says George Schaller, a renowned biologist and gorilla expert. Their population is split between two regions, including mist-covered defunct volcanoes within Congo, Uganda and Rwanda-one of Africa's smallest and most densely populated countries. Instead of disappearing, the number of mountain gorillas-a subspecies of eastern gorillas-has risen from 680 a decade ago to just over 1,000 today. We celebrate that as a victory," Hirwa says. It wouldn't have happened without an intervention some biologists call "extreme conservation," which has entailed monitoring every single gorilla in the rainforest, periodically giving them veterinary care-to clean infected wounds, for instance-and funding forest protection by sending money into communities that might otherwise resent not being able to convert the woods into cropland. Alarmed by rising rates of poaching and deforestation in central Africa, she predicted the species could go extinct by 2000. The late American primatologist Dian Fossey, who began the world's longest-running gorilla study here in 1967, would likely be surprised any mountain gorillas are left to study. 2, 2019 photo, a silverback mountain gorilla named Segasira looks up as he lies under a tree in the Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. Last fall, the Switzerland-based International Union for Conservation of Nature changed the status of mountain gorillas from "critically endangered" to "endangered," an improved if still-fragile designation, reflecting new survey data. Instead, a concerted and sustained conservation campaign has averted the worst and given a second chance to these great apes, which share about 98% of human DNA. Yet Fossey herself, who died in 1985, would likely be surprised any mountain gorillas are left to study. ![]() Hirwa and the two great apes are all part of the world's longest-running gorilla study-a project begun in 1967 by famed American primatologist Dian Fossey. Hirwa makes a low hum-"ahh-mmm"-imitating the gorillas' usual sound of reassurance. The large adult male sitting next to her, known as a silverback, looks at him quizzically. Biologist Jean Paul Hirwa notes her meal on his tablet computer as he peers out from behind a nearby stand of stinging nettles.
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