Happy Gorilla News
>> Wednesday, January 28, 2009
In case you forgot, 2009 is the Year of the Gorilla. I figured I would attempt to do one post a month on these amazing creatures and today was the day for January. Luckily, I have some really happy news this time. Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo just completed a survey stating that despite the conflicts, habitat loss, and poachers, gorilla numbers are up 12.5%. The press release is here and everyone is excited. There are even stories on the yog2009 site, BBC, and National Geographic.
Why all the publicity for these guys? Well, it is officially Year of the Gorilla and there is a serious war going on in the Congo. The most amazing part of all this? The apes went without protection for about 15 months during the conflict. The national park has a 680 person strong ranger force to protect the now estimated at 211 gorillas. Ten babies were born during the 15 month the rangers could not be there.
They still, however, need our help. There are lots of things you can do to ensure these majestic animals will be around a bit longer. To find out more, you can go to yog2009 (Year of the Gorilla official website) or GRASP (run by United Nations).
Photo is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 to bertieboy70 on flickr. You can find the original here.
2 comments:
Gee,it seems like lots of animals are in trouble! I am glad the number of gorillas is up, at least. Hopefully it will increase this year - year of the Gorilla. Had no idea. Thought it was year of the ox (o.k. that's chinese astrology).
You're having problems in bloggerville and I'm having problems posting. Tried twice and then gave up. Let's blame it on all this snow up here.
LOL!
haha! It is blogger I think. A few others were talking about some glitches on their sites as well. I hope you're keeping warm!
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