Thursday, August 07, 2008

That's a lot of gorillas!

In some exciting conservation news that almost slipped me by (a hearty thanks to "the Naner" for pointing it out to me), researchers have discovered a new population of critically-endangered western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. The estimate of 125,000 individuals (!), based on the number of "nests" observed in the 47,000 km2 area, is more than double the previous estimate for the number of these gorillas in the wild.

At first I thought the 125,000 number must be a mistake - I would have thought finding 30 gorillas was a big deal. But then I read that these gorillas were found in the swamps of equatorial Africa in a remote part of the Congo, so I can understand why they hadn't been found before. Just thinking about their location gives me malarial chills...

Read more here...

Watch a video of the gorilla discovery here...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

what about the gibbons?