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Officially this is an estimate, but having been where these animals live, I believe we can have an exact count. Keep in mind that when we say “globally” this
by skohan 6y ago
Officially this is an estimate, but having been where these animals live, I believe we can have an exact count. Keep in mind that when we say “globally” this means a tiny region straddling the border between Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.
We are talking about a few families of gorillas, some of which are tracked daily. There is a massive conservation effort on these animals, at least in Rwanda and Uganda, they all have names and I don’t think a gorilla is born without someone knowing about it
- ethbr0 6y agoI believe it also helps that they live in social groups, aside from some solitary males. So we're tracking (population / avg_group_size + misc_males) objects, as opposed to the entire population. Example on the other end would be snow leopards (130+ sq km) and grizzlies (380+ sq km), which are mostly solitary and have huge ranges.
- distribot 6y agoIf there are really 1063 I would think conservationists could know about almost every one individually. That's smaller than the high school I went to. I know they are spread out over a wide area in a dense jungle but I think it would be possible.
- mattowen_uk 6y agoThis film explains it all: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095243/ At the worst point their numbers dropped to the mid 100s. The main threat to them is poaching, and local wars. For further info: https://gorillafund.org/ https://gorillafund.org/