Eastern Lowland Gorillas 70 Percent Gone Since 1994

WASHINGTON, DC, March 30, 2004 (ENS) - Already endangered, eastern lowland gorillas are dying out. In the past 10 years, war, hunting, mining, and other pressures from increasing numbers of humans have exterminated 70 percent of the world population of eastern lowland gorillas, found mainly in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to a new scientific assessment.

Scientists estimate that fewer than 5,000 individuals, remain, down from 17,000 in 1994.

"The staggering and almost immediate disappearance of the eastern lowland gorilla underscores the alarming decline of an entire ecosystem," said Juan Carlos Bonilla, senior director for Central Africa at Conservation International.

But help is on the way in the form of multi-million dollar conservation funding from the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.

One of only 5,000 eastern lowland gorilla's left in the wild. (Photo © WWF-Canon/Chris Martin Bahr)

Conservation International is a key partner in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, which funds the preservation of 11 biologically rich landscapes in six Congo Basin nations, including the DRC.

Congo Basin Forest Partnership funding is distributed through the United States Agency for International Development's Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE).

With funding from a CARPE grant, Conservation International partnered with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to implement field conservation in the landscape. The Dian Fossey Fund will receive $585,000 from that funding, as well as $393,000 from Conservation International's Global Conservation Fund. Similar levels of funding are expected for the next two years.

The investment is aimed at increasing the protection of more than three million hectares in the region, which contains roughly 97 percent of the distribution and population of the eastern lowland gorilla.

Conservation International's DRC office is designing a biodiversity conservation corridor for the entire region, where other CARPE partners World Wide Fund for Nature and Wildlife Conservation Society will also conduct conservation efforts.

"This joint effort - which includes everyone from tribal chiefs to nongovernmental organizations and national governments - represents an unprecedented commitment to preserve the region," said Bonilla.

Congolese partners the Institut Congolais pour la Protection de la Nature (ICCN) and local community groups will be part of the protective effort. The funding will help build the capacity of Congolese institutions for long term conservation of the numerous endangered species that live in these Afromontane and Congo Basin forests.

For other species that inhabit this region - the chimpanzee, forest elephant, Nile crocodile, Congo peacock, Congo bay owl, okapi, and leopard - are also experiencing severe declines.

"We are now beginning to realize that the eastern lowland gorillas are not only an important charismatic species that can enhance conservation awareness for all the floral and faunal species in its habitat," said Patrick Mehlman, PhD, director of Africa programs for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International.

"These gorillas also appear to be a critical biological indicator species, with their presence indicating healthy forest that contains surviving populations of other endangered fauna, like the forest elephant," Mehlman explained.

Known to scientists as Gorilla beringei graueri, or Grauer's gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla has a well developed social structure, living and travelling in family groups. Only one infant is raised to adulthood every six to eight years, an infant mortality is high.

Male eastern lowland gorillas have a silver marking across their backs. (Photo courtesy WWF)

The region, known as the Maiko Tayna Kahuzi-Biega Landscape, contains a high degree of biological richness and native species found nowhere else on Earth. Although a protected area since 1938, Maiko National Park has been widely recognized as an ineffective paper park with no real protection.

In 1959, John Emlen and George Schaller assessed the distribution of eastern gorillas for the first time.

In 1991, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society in collaboration with ICCN and other organizations began a systematic effort to identify all populations of Grauer's gorilla and evaluate their status. Eleven populations across the gorilla's 90,000 square kilometer range were identified, and the scientists estimated the total number of animals to be 16,900 individuals, they wrote in "Gorilla Journal" in June 1998.

The Congo Basin Forest Partnership includes international organizations and corporations and 15 governments, including the United States. When Secretary of State Colin Powell announced U.S. participation in the partnership at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, he said the United States planned to invest up to $53 million dollars in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership through the year 2005.

At a fiscal year 2005 budget hearing March 10, Secretary Powell said the Bush administration is still committed to the Congo Basin. "The slight reduction in the environmental sector will not affect high priority efforts such as the Congo Basin Forest Initiative," he told the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.

Find out more about the Congo Basin Forest Partnership online at: http://www.cbfp.org/en/index.aspx