After the
discovery of mountain gorillas over two decades by Europeans, it prompted the
government of Belgian government to create the Albertine National Park in 1925
which is now the virunga conservation park. The population of gorillas in this
park was stable until 1960 when a census was undertaken by George Schaller
indicated that about 450 individuals in the range and by 1971, the population
of mountain gorillas had fallen to an estimate of 250. Eco-tourism has been
encouraged as a way to conserve mountain gorillas however, despite the success
of eco-tourism there are still various threats to the ongoing survival of
mountain gorillas in the wild. The Rwandan conflicts foristance had several
repercussions in the virunga national park.
The Bwindi population is however more
immediately secure than the gorillas
because Bwindi impenetrable park is not divided by arbitrary political
borders, and this means that the entire population can be protected within one
well managed and carefully monitored national park. The habituation of mountain
gorillas in Bwindi impenetrable park has increased their vulnerability to
poachers within the area.
The benefits
derived from gorilla tourism do extend much further for the activity and now
forms the foundation of Uganda’s national tourist industry where the majority
of the people who come to the pearl of Africa
to see the mountain gorillas do spend money in other parts of the
country there by generating foreign
revenue and creating employment well
beyond the immediate vicinities of the
mountain gorilla reserves and this result is a symbolic situation whereby a far
greater number of people, nationally and internationally are very much motivated to take an active
interest in the protection of the gorillas than would otherwise be the case.
Ecology
and Taxonomy
Mountain gorillas
are the largest primate gorillas which are widespread residents of the
equatorial African rainforest with a global population of per harps 100,000
concentrated mainly in the Congo basin.
The conventional
taxonomic classification of the mountain gorillas has been very much challenged
by the recent advances in the DNA testing and the fresh morphological studies
suggests that the western and the eastern gorilla population range lie more
than 1,000 kilometers a part. It should be noted however that the first study
of the mountain gorillas was undertaken in the 1950s by George Schaller, whose
pioneering work greatly formed the starting point for the more recent
researches by Dian Fossey in the 1960s though the brutal and unsolved murder of
Fossey at her research center in the of 1985
has been generally thought as one of the great work.
Discrepancy
of the mountain gorillas
A
mountain gorilla is distinguished from lowland counterparts by several
adaptations concerning it’s altitude home. A female mountain gorilla
reaches sexual maturity at the age of
eight (8) and after which she will then
often move between different troops several times and once a female has
successfully given birth to young ones,
she will normally stay loyal to that male which is the silverback until he
dies. The females do have a gestation period which is similar to humans and
when she reaches the old age, she will have raised up to six off springs to
sexual maturity.
Feeding of the endangered mountain gorillas
These great apes are primarily vegetarian
and their main diet is composed of bamboo shoots being the favored diet. They
are also known to eat about 58 different species of plants and several insects
with ants being their popular protein supplement. Being sedentary creatures, they
typically move less than 1 kilometer in a day which tracking them on a day to
day basis relatively easy more so if you are an experienced guide.
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