“I’m always amazed and very proud when we can confirm that (mountain gorillas) are smart.”
And now for something completely different: A feel-good dispatch from the journals of New Scientist,.
Days after a poachers’ snare killed one of their own in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda’s green-limned forest home to the critically endangered mountain gorilla, conservationists on the scene witnessed two young gorillas searching for, finding and then destroying wire snares.
Conservationist Veronica Vecellio, a gorilla program coordinator with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund based in Rwanda, told National Geographic at the time that this was the first time researchers witnessed juvenile gorillas doing that.
“I don’t know of any other reports of juveniles destroying snares, she told NatGeo. “We are the largest database and observer of wild gorillas . . . so I would be very surprised if somebody else has seen that.”
The unrelenting trade in illegal wildlife trafficking and poaching for bushmeat — coveted throughout forested areas of Africa as a good source of protein and, in some cases, a delicacy — has seen a proliferation of wire and rope-and-branch throughout the subcontinent, traps which are intended for small antelopes and other mammals, but which sometimes ensnare apes as well. Adult gorillas are strong enough to tear the snares apart, but baby gorillas are not always so lucky.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the mountain gorilla as Endangered as of November, 2018, which is actually down-listed from Critically Endangered, as it was before conservation efforts began to take hold in Rwanda and neighbouring Uganda. At their lowest point there were estimated to be no more than 680 mountain gorillas remaining, a population that has since recovered to more than 1,000 individuals. Mountain gorillas, a close relative of the more common but also threatened lowland gorilla, have benefited from intensive conservation actions as anti-poaching patrols using armed rangers on foot and the physical removal of snares by park rangers.
The IUCN Red List, established in 1964, is a critical indicator of the world’s biodiversity and has evolved to become the connected world’s most valuable, comprehensive and trusted source of information, using statistical and behavioural science to inform the conservation movement and galvanize it to action.
The Red List was designed to both inform and stir people to action on behalf of endangered species, not just animals but also plants, trees and fungi. The IUCN Red List provides hard facts about size, habitat and ecology of various endangered species, human use and exploitation of said species, and threats, both natural and human. The idea is to prompt policy change where needed, all the while providing information that helps inform conservation decision making. More than 30,000 animals, plants and trees are threatened with extinction, 27% of all discovered, identified species.
Vecellio, for her part, told National Geographic that while researchers are gratified, if not entirely surprised, to see the gorillas take matters into their own hands, they won’t encourage other gorillas to do the same, or teach them. It’s imperative that conservationists not affect animals’ natural behaviour, she said, even when the species’ survival is at stake.
We may be closing in on the year 2020, but the natural sciences are still capable of making new discoveries.
Just 10 days ago, scientists have identified a new species of primate living in the Amazon rainforest, Plecturocebus parecis, a new species of grey monkey endemic to Brazil’s Parecis Plateau in the state of Rondônia. The surrounding rainforest is under threat from the usual villains, but the monkeys have survived so far because — much like Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World — the plateau’s steep sides make it hard to access.
Scientists first noted the species in 1914 but it is only now that biologists have identified the monkeys as being members of a distinct, separate species, based on DNA readings and detailed studies of the monkey’s genome that rely on recent breakthroughs in biotechnology to separate one species from another.
One of the wonderful things about nature is its resilience.
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