How a community approach to gorilla conservation benefits apes and humans in Rwanda
- The central African country’s endangered mountain gorillas have been given a lifeline with an ‘extreme conservation’ project in Volcanoes National Park
- Every gorilla is monitored and 10 per cent of income from tourism is channelled to nearby villages, preventing destruction of the rainforest for crops
Deep in the rainforest of Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, a 23-year-old female gorilla named Kurudi feeds on wild celery.She bends the green stalks and, with long careful fingers, peels off the exterior skin to expose the succulent centre.
Biologist Jean Paul Hirwa notes her meal on his tablet computer as he peers out from behind a nearby stand of stinging nettles.
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.
Yet Fossey herself, who died in 1985, would probably be surprised that any mountain gorillas are left to study. Alarmed by rising rates of poaching and deforestation in central Africa, she predicted the species could go extinct by 2000.
Instead, a concerted and sustained conservation campaign has averted the worst and given a second chance to these great apes, which share about 98 per cent of human DNA.