The most recent census of mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park finds the population has increased by 6 percent since 2002. ScienceDaily reports Bwindi’s gorilla population now numbers 340 individual gorillas, up from 320 in 2002, and 300 in 1997. Bwindi is one of only two places in the world where the rare gorillas exist. “This is great news for all of the organizations that have worked to protect Bwindi and its gorilla population,” said Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Dr. Alastair McNeilage, who is also the director of the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Bwindi. “There are very few cases in this world where a small population of a endangered primates is actually increasing.”
Reading this makes me realize how rare good news is in this trade and what a strange, alien feeling hope is. May there be more of it.
For more on the sixth great extinction underway and the fate of at least half of all lifeforms on Earth, read MoJo’s latest cover piece. –Julia Whitty
