With deforestation as the major threat – supplemented by
diseases, bush meat hunting, and illegal capture for the pet trade – the future
looks rather bleak for many primates, including our closest relatives, the
great apes. Well, for most of them. There is one ape – asides humans – which has
actually been increasing in numbers.
That ape is the mountain gorilla.
One of the biggest assets that the world’s biggest primates
enjoy is the health care provided by the Gorilla Doctors of the Mountain
Gorilla Veterinary Project. The project
was initiated in the mid 1980s by famed researcher Dian Fossey. Fossey, who lost her life in her war against
poaching, was very concerned by the numbers of gorillas she was observing with
illnesses and injuries, some of them caused by the snares set out by poachers.
Fossey is gone, but the project lives on in a dozen or so
veterinarians, who provide medical care for the gorillas in the field. They collect data on the animals, which are
habituated to allow routine visual health checks – not as hands on as they
would be with zoo gorillas which are trained to assist in veterinary care, but
far more so than would be possible for most wild apes. Medication and treatment are provided as
needed. Orphans are rescued from the pet
trade and maintained in semi-wild conditions.
Other local species, such as bats and rodents, are monitored for
diseases which have the potential to negatively impact both gorillas and
humans.
Perhaps most importantly, the MGVP recognizes that gorilla
conservation is at the heart of maintaining gorilla health. One hundred or two hundred years ago, no one
was off in the bush giving gorillas physicals and the apes were doing
fine. Now, however, with their numbers and
range reduced so much by human activity, any additional loss of animals can
threaten the population. Humans caused
the problem, the thinking goes, so humans have an obligation to help remedy it.
It seems to be working.
Again, while gorilla populations elsewhere in Africa are declining – as are
numbers of chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans – mountain gorillas are on the
rise. I attribute that in part to this
project, and in part due to the major economic incentive that the countries
that mountain gorillas are home to have in protecting the animals for
ecotourism.
No zoos currently house mountain gorillas, but many have
played a major role in the project. A
biobank of gorilla samples is maintained at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, which
for twenty years led the project (it is now based out of UC Davis Wildlife
Health Center). I’m sure Fossey – who had
a complicated love/hate relationship with zoos – would be pleased to see the
contributions that they are making towards saving the species.
More importantly, I think she would be pleased if she were
able to take a quick peek at the project’s website and scroll through the
pictures of the veterinary staff. The
vast majority of the faces on the screen are African, representing vets from
Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. After years of fighting in the field, Fossey
could rest easily knowing that the future of mountain gorillas in Central
Africa is looking brighter due to the committed efforts of so many local
leaders.
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