From risk to resilience: The story of the mountain gorilla
Global species populations are declining at a catastrophic rate.
Since 1970, wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73 per cent. The staggering figure comes from WWF’s most recent Living Planet Report, which measured the average change in population sizes of more than 5,000 vertebrate species between 1970 and 2020.
While this number is dire, things are far from hopeless. We can recover species and help reverse the trend, even though the challenges facing wildlife are increasing. The remarkable story of the mountain gorilla is one example of how.
Despite threats such as habitat destruction, disease and years of civil unrest — which had put mountain gorillas in East-Central Africa on the path to extinction in the 1980s — their numbers are on the rise today. So, what’s the story?
Builders of biodiversity
Mountain gorillas are among the closest living relatives to humans, sharing more than 98 per cent of our genetic code. They are intelligent animals, capable of problem-solving and forming complex social structures. The largest of the great apes, gorillas are characterized by a stocky build, broad shoulders, and a hairless face with small eyes.
A little over half of mountain gorillas live in the Virunga Mountain region. Weighing up to 180 kilograms, gorillas play an essential role in maintaining biodiversity in their rainforest homes. They disperse seeds and create small clearings in the foliage as they forage, which allows a wider array of plant species to find sunlight and thrive.
A mountain of threats
For decades, mountain gorillas have gradually lost their living space. Their habitat has overlapped with conflict areas, where civil unrest has made for dangerous conditions for gorillas, locals and conservationists alike. Human encroachment on gorilla habitat can also expose gorillas to diseases — even the common cold can be lethal — and drive populations higher up into the mountains for longer, where colder temperatures can be also deadly for them. And because female gorillas may give birth to only three or four offspring in their lifetime, it’s harder for populations to recover from the loss of even one individual.
These threats have caused dramatic declines in mountain gorilla numbers. Forty-five years ago, this trend was dire, with just 250 individuals left in one population in the Virunga Mountain area in East Africa, down from 500 reported 20 years earlier.
But with hard work and the right conservation measures, the last few decades have seen a slow and steady recovery of this iconic species.
Partnering for protection
WWF is a founding member of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP), a coalition of conservation groups committed to protecting the future of mountain gorillas. By working directly with local communities in and near gorilla ranges, the IGCP combines science and education to promote conservation actions that also sustainably support livelihoods.
By researching and monitoring mountain gorillas, we can better understand the threats they face and better shape our conservation strategies to help protect them. Through the IGCP, field staff and national park rangers can get training on how to track gorilla numbers, and researchers can coordinate their findings on what diseases and other factors are affecting gorillas’ health and recovery. Together, this data can support decisions about exactly where and how conservation actions will be the most effective.
What do these conservation actions look like? Managing protected areas, monitoring gorilla groups closely, promoting safe and sustainable ecotourism and using veterinary interventions when gorillas are sick or injured have helped spur the recovery of this vulnerable population. Findings show populations in the Virunga Mountains have grown to 604 individuals, up from 480 individuals in 2010. That represents a 25.8% increase in this specific population.
The mountain gorilla may for now be considered a conservation success story, which you can read more about in the 2024 Living Planet Report, but its next chapters are still unwritten. While this population growth is promising, the mountain gorilla is the only great ape globally that is not in steep decline, highlighting the need for greater conservation efforts broadly.
Recovering species abroad, igniting hope at home
We know multi-pronged conservation approaches — like the ones that have helped recover mountain gorillas — work. That’s why WWF-Canada also looks at every conservation challenge here at home from multiple angles. By applying an informed approach that looks at the whole picture, we can also reverse population declines of species at risk in Canada.
With the help of supporters like you, WWF-Canada can continue investing in research, prioritizing partnerships and supporting Indigenous-led and community-led conservation efforts to protect the country’s iconic species. Learning from our colleagues and communities across the global conservation network, we know it’s possible, and that we have the tools.
From spawning salmon to roaming caribou to migrating monarchs, species at risk in Canada need your help too, often facing many threats at one time, including habitat loss, overfishing or overharvesting, invasive species and disease, pollution, and the accelerating threat of climate change.
With so many overlapping threats, targeting only one threat at a time is unlikely to be successful. Instead, we need use conservation strategies that work together to help recover species and protect and restore their habitats to make them more resilient.
WWF-Canada has the expertise and experience needed to reverse nature and wildlife loss — but we need help to put plans into action. Continued donor support allows to:
- Conduct critical scientific research, like our flagship Living Planet Report Canada, to ensure our conservation strategies are up to date, data-driven and effective.
- Support community-led conservation and training, such as monitoring species populations and measuring carbon stored in nature, to ensure sustainable stewardship for many years to come.
- Work in partnership with government, local organizations and Indigenous Nations to better understand both the threats faced by species at risk and the solutions to help them recover.
Declines in wildlife populations are an early warning sign of extinction risk and the potential loss of healthy ecosystems we all depend on. We must act now to continue applying strategic conservation to species at risk here in Canada, before wildlife losses become unrecoverable. Together, we can turn risk into resilience for some of our country’s most iconic species.
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