Western Lowland Gorilla

Charity: Zoological Society of London (ZSL)
Project: Mikongo Gorilla Ecotourism & Conservation Project
Where in the World? Central Gabon
Grant: £59,950

WHERE YOUR MONEY GOES
One of the best ways to protect gorillas is to encourage people to pay to view them. That is exactly what we are doing in Gabon, where we are working with the Zoological Society of London on the Mikongo Gorilla Ecotourism and Conservation Project. The idea is to get a few groups of western lowland gorillas accustomed to people, so they will be comfortable being watched by tourists. As the gorillas generate revenue from ecotourism, they will become more valuable to, and protected by the local community.

HOW YOUR MONEY IS HELPING
The BBC Wildlife Fund has given £59,950 to the Zoological Society of London to fund the Mikongo Gorilla Ecotourism and Conservation Project for two years.

The aim of the project is simple: to develop an ecotourism scheme that generates high revenues but has little impact on the gorillas or their habitat.

The first challenge is to get some gorillas used to the presence of people, so they do not become disturbed by tourists. We have already selected one group of gorillas to focus on, and have marked out their range. That’s important because unlike other gorillas, western lowlands travel widely and tourists will not be able to rely on seeing them in forest clearings. Instead, tourists and their guides will have to track the gorillas for long distances before catching a glimpse.

We are also building hides and training Gabonese staff, including four gorilla trackers, two ecoguides, a health technician and a driver and mechanic.

A second aim of the project is to monitor the gorilla’s health, to help understand how diseases may be spread between people and apes. That’s to ensure that ecotourists do not make the gorillas ill. An outreach programme is also being organised to help local communities develop tourism-based and other livelihoods.

OUTLOOK
A sustainable ecotourist programme should help provide much needed revenue to both the Lopé National Park and local communities, both of which can safeguard the gorilla.

Protecting the western lowland gorilla and its rainforest habitat should help protect other species that live in Gabon, including chimpanzees, mandrills, elephants, leopard, antelopes and many types of monkey.

DID YOU KNOW?
Unusually, a gorilla's thumb is larger than its fingers.

When an outbreak of the Ebola virus strikes a group of western lowland gorillas, it kills 95 per cent of them. The 5 per cent that survive are likely to have never been infected, rather than be resistant, showing just how deadly this virus is to great apes.

We do not know exactly how many types of gorilla exist. Traditionally, we thought there was just one gorilla, which was first described to western science in 1847. Nowadays, scientists say there are two distinct species of gorilla, the Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and Eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei), but they are not sure how many sub species of gorilla there are. The western lowland gorilla is a sub species of the Western gorilla, the other sub species being the Cross River gorilla. All known sub species of gorilla are considered to be threatened or critically threatened by the World Conservation Union.

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