Eastern Gorilla Gorilla beringei
Critically Endangered
Location: Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda
The Eastern gorilla, the largest living primate, is a symbol of strength, intelligence, and resilience. Divided into two subspecies—the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) and Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri)—this critically endangered great ape inhabits the montane and lowland forests of East and Central Africa. Despite their ecological significance as seed dispersers and their cultural importance, Eastern gorillas face imminent threats from habitat destruction, poaching, and disease.Between the two subspecies, there are estimated to be fewer than 5,000 individuals remaining in the wild. According to IUCN, there are 1,063 Mountain gorillas Gorilla beringei beringei and an estimated 3,800 Grauer’s gorilla Gorilla beringei graueri.
Their survival hinges on swift and strong protections for their habitat and enforcement of the illegal wildlife trade. Join the fight for these gentle giants—boycott palm oil and support efforts to protect their habitats. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
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Eastern #Gorillas 🦍🦍 are powerful yet gentle. They’re critically endangered in #Uganda 🇺🇬 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Rwanda due to complex threats incl. #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation. Protect them! #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🪔🔥🩸🤢⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect palmoildetectives.com/2021/03/…
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Eastern #Gorillas 🦍🦍 are large! Males weigh up to 200kg. They use vocalisations, facial expressions, and body language to communicate. #Critically #endangered by #mining #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. 🌴🪔🔥🩸🤢⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect palmoildetectives.com/2021/03/…
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Appearance and Behaviour
Eastern gorillas are the largest of all gorilla species, with adult males (silverbacks) weighing up to 200 kg and standing 1.7 metres tall when upright. Females are smaller, weighing around 90–100 kg. They are characterised by their robust build, long black hair, and pronounced sagittal crests in males, which support their massive jaw muscles.
Mountain gorillas have thicker, longer fur, adapted for the cold, high-altitude climates of the Virunga Mountains, while Grauer’s gorillas have shorter fur suited to the tropical lowland and mid-altitude forests of the DRC. These gorillas are highly intelligent, with advanced tool-use capabilities and complex social structures.
They live in groups of 5–30 individuals led by a dominant silverback, who protects the group, mediates conflicts, and determines movement patterns. Eastern gorillas communicate using an extensive repertoire of vocalisations, facial expressions, and body language, including chest-beating displays to signal dominance or ward off threats.
Geographic Range
Eastern gorillas are endemic to the forests of East and Central Africa. The mountain gorilla is confined to the Virunga Massif, spanning Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC, and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. Fewer than 1,100 mountain gorillas remain (IUCN, 2020).
Grauer’s gorilla, the largest gorilla subspecies, resides exclusively in the lowland and mid-altitude forests of eastern DRC. Their population has declined by 80% in recent decades, with fewer than 3,800 individuals estimated to survive in fragmented habitats (Fauna & Flora International, 2024).
Previously estimated to number around 16,900 individuals, recent surveys show that Grauer’s Gorilla numbers have dropped to only 3,800 individuals – a 77% reduction in just one generation (ibid.) This rate of population loss is almost three times above that which qualifies a species as Critically Endangered.IUCN red list
Diet
Diets of Eastern Gorillas vary greatly with elevation and the availability of food. Mountain Gorillas are largely herbivorous and feed on stems, pith, leaves, bark, and occasionally ants. Their favouritge food items are wild celery, thistles, nettles, bedstraw, wood and roots. Both subspecies feed almost exclusively on young bamboo shoots when they are in season twice a year. Gorillas at lower elevations have a more diverse and seasonal diet. Both Grauer’s Gorillas in lowland forest and Bwindi Gorillas are frugivorous.
Eastern Gorillas are diurnal and semi-terrestrial. After waking, they feed intensively and then alternate rest, travelling and feeding until night-time. All Gorillas build nests to sleep in, some in trees, but the majority of their nests are on the ground. Gorillas are not territorial, and there is extensive overlap between the annual home ranges of different groups, which vary in size from 6–40 km².
Reproduction and Mating
Eastern gorillas have slow reproductive rates, with females reaching sexual maturity at around 10 years of age and giving birth to a single infant every 4–6 years. The gestation period lasts approximately 8.5 months. Infant mortality is high, with only about 50% surviving to adulthood.
Infants are entirely dependent on their mothers for the first three years, clinging to their fur and nursing. Male silverbacks play a protective role, guarding young gorillas from predators or rival males. However, habitat fragmentation and stress caused by human disturbances have disrupted these delicate reproductive cycles, exacerbating population decline (National Geographic, 2024).
Take Action!
Virunga National Park works tirelessly to protect gorilla habitats, combat poaching, and engage local communities in conservation. Long-term survival requires scaling these efforts and addressing habitat destruction at its root causes.
You can make a difference for Eastern gorillas. Boycott palm oil, support organisations involved in ecosystem and gorilla protection such as Virunga National Park and advocate for stricter wildlife protection laws. Share their story and help secure a future for these majestic primates. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
Threats
Conservation efforts have yielded some success for mountain gorillas, whose numbers have slowly increased due to intensive monitoring, anti-poaching patrols, and ecotourism initiatives in protected areas like Volcanoes National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. However, Grauer’s gorillas remain critically endangered, with declining populations.
- Poaching: Despite the fact that all killing, capture or consumption of great apes is illegal, hunting represents the greatest threat to Grauer’s Gorillas and laws against the illegal wildlife trade are poorly enforced.
- Habitat loss and degradation: Corporate agricultural activities for tobacco, palm oil plantations, cocoa and coffee cause continuing loss and fragmentation of Gorilla habitat in DRC. Over 70% of Grauer’s gorilla habitat has been degraded or lost since the 1990s (IUCN, 2020). Illegal mining has decimated the lowlands of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, a Grauer’s Gorilla stronghold. Destruction of forest for timber, charcoal production along with palm oil, tobacco and cocoa agriculture continues to threaten the isolated Gorilla populations that persist in North Kivu and the Itombwe Massif. Eastern Gorillas as forced into smaller patches of fragmented forests.
- Human diseases: Due to their close genetic relationship to humans and physiological similarities, Gorillas are highly susceptible to many human diseases such as respiratory infections and Ebola, which have caused significant population declines.
- Armed conflict and civil war: For two decades, refugees, internally-displaced people and numerous armed groups have placed enormous pressure on DRC’s forests through uncontrolled habitat conversion for farmland, harvesting of firewood, timber extraction and mining. Armed conflict has exacerbated poaching and hunting for bushmeat, traditional medicine, and trophies.
- Small Population Size: Genetic bottlenecks due to population fragmentation increase the risk of inbreeding and reduce resilience to environmental changes.
Eastern Gorillas (Gorilla beringei) live in the mountainous forests of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, northwest Rwanda and southwest Uganda. This region was the epicentre of Africa’s “world war”, to which Gorillas have also fallen victim.IUCN Red LIST
- Climate change: Climate change is predicted to impact the forests of the Albertine Rift escarpment, leading to the upslope migration of species and key Gorilla habitat, notably montane forest (Ayebare et al. 2013). Increased temperatures and modified rainfall patterns are also likely to result in changes in food availability and habitat quality (McGahey et al. 2013).
The Mountain Gorilla subspecies (Gorilla beringei beringei), was listed as Critically Endangered since 1996. Although a drastic reduction of the Grauer’s Gorilla subspecies (Gorilla beringei graueri), has long been suspected, quantitative evidence of the decline has been lacking (Robbins and Williamson 2008). During the past 20 years, Grauer’s Gorillas have been severely affected by human activities, most notably poaching for bushmeat associated with artisanal mining camps and for commercial trade (Plumptre et al. 2016). This illegal hunting has been facilitated by a proliferation of firearms resulting from widespread insecurity in the region. Previously estimated to number around 16,900 individuals, recent surveys show that Grauer’s Gorilla numbers have dropped to only 3,800 individuals – a 77% reduction in just one generation (ibid.) This rate of population loss is almost three times above that which qualifies a species as Critically Endangered.
Mountain Gorillas have been faring substantially better; one of the two subpopulations is recovering from an all-time low in the 1980s, making Mountain Gorillas the only great ape taxon that has been increasing in number (Gray et al. 2013). A 2015–2016, survey of the Virunga population has confirmed that it is still growing and has now increased to over 600 individuals, bringing the total population to roughly 1,000 (Hickey et al. 2018).
Grauer’s Gorillas continue to decline at an average rate of 5% per year (Plumptre et al. 2016). Even with the growth of the Mountain Gorilla subspecies, the overall decline of the Eastern Gorilla species is expected to exceed 80% over three generations due to the high levels of poaching, loss of habitat as human populations expand, and civil unrest and lawlessness in parts of this species’ geographic range. If unabated, in 2054, only 14% of the 1994 population will remain. Therefore, Eastern Gorillas qualify as Critically Endangered under criterion A (A4bcd).
Support the conservation of this species
Uganda Wildlife Authority
Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN)
Virunga National Park
Further Information
Earth.org. (2024). Eastern gorilla.
Fauna & Flora International. (2024). Grauer’s gorilla.
Jones, P. et al. (2024). Genetic diversity in Gorilla beringei populations.
International Fund for Animal Welfare. (2024). Eastern gorillas.
Photography by Dalida Innes Wildlife photography
Plumptre, A., Robbins, M.M. & Williamson, E.A. 2019. Gorilla beringei. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T39994A115576640. dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.201…. Downloaded on 11 March 2021.
National Geographic. (2024). Mountain gorilla.
Smith, J. et al. (2024). Role of Gorilla beringei in seed dispersal in Central African forests.
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#Africa #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Congo #critically #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #EasternGorillaGorillaBeringei #endangered #Gorillas #mining #PalmOil #palmoil #poaching #Primate #primates #Rwanda #TheDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #Uganda
Tapanuli Orangutan Pongo tapanuliensis
Critically Endangered
Population: 800
Due to high levels of habitat conversion and fragmentation, and illegal killing, Tapanuli Orangutans are estimated to have experienced a significant population reduction in recent decades. Forest loss data indicate that orangutan habitat below 500 m asl of both P. tapanuliensis and P. abelii was reduced by 60% between 1985 and 2007 (Wich et al. 2008, 2011). It is thought that this reduction will continue for the Tapanuli Orangutan as forests within its range remain under considerable threat (Wich et al. 2016). Significant areas of the Tapanuli Orangutan’s range are seriously threatened by habitat conversion for small-scale agriculture, mining exploration and exploitation, a large-scale hydroelectric scheme, geothermal development, and agricultural plantations. Approximately 14% of the geographic range of the Tapanuli Orangutan is not protected, nor even allocated as forest estate, and even the protected areas are not immune from the above threats (Wich et al. 2008, 2011, 2016).
Just 800 Tapanuli Orangutans remain alive due to #palmoil and #mining #deforestation. If you find their imminent #extinction a disgrace 😡‼️ – there’s something you can do! #BoycottPalmOil 🌴☠️🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/…
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The rarest species of #orangutan, the #Tapanuli is on the verge of being lost due to #palmoil and #mining #deforestation destroying 80% of their range. Say no to #ecocide ⛔️🙊🔥🌴🪔 when u shop #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @[url=did:plc:l5fq7xd3z4citquu7hzv7ypf]Palm Oil Detectives | #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife[/url] palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/…
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There are < 800 Tapanuli Orangutans left in the wild due to #palmoil and #mining #deforestation loss of 85% of their habitat. They face imminent #extinction. Protect them with a #Boycott4Wildlife of brands destroying forests. More 👇🧐Tweet
The Tapanuli Orangutan was until relatively recently more widespread, with sightings further south in the lowland peat swamp forests in the Lumut area (Wich et al. 2003) and several nests encountered during a rapid survey in 2010 (G. Fredriksson pers. obs.). The forests in the Lumut area have in recent years almost completely been converted to oil-palm plantations.
IUCN Red List
Further Information
Nowak, M.G., Rianti, P., Wich , S.A., Meijaard, E. & Fredriksson, G. 2017. Pongo tapanuliensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017: e.T120588639A120588662. dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.201…. Downloaded on 24 January 2021.
Tapanuli Orangutan Pongo tapanuliensis
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
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2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status…
twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status…
twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1…
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support
#Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #ecocide #extinction #Malaysia #Mammal #mining #orangutan #palmoil #Primate #SouthEastAsia #Sumatra #Tapanuli #TapanuliOrangutanPongoTapanuliensis
Established in 1964, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species