Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Good news for gorillas

From the New York Times

A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations.

As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world’s largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations — estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s — had been devastated by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola virus. The three other subspecies are either critically endangered or endangered.
Read the rest of the article to see that the gorillas - and many other of our primate cousins - aren't out of the woods yet. (And, yes, I mean that in both sense.)

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