Mountain Gorillas: Three Decades of Research at Karisoke

Abstract

M. M. Robbins, P. Sicotte, K. J. Stewart.(eds) 2001. Mountain Gorillas: Three Decades of Research at Karisoke. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, xiii + 431 pp. ISBN 0-521-78004-7, price (hardbound), $85.00. The world's gorilla population is relatively small and still declining. Of the three extant subspecies, the mountain gorilla is the rarest. Only about 600 of these majestic apes are left in the wild, about half of which occur in the Virunga Mountains (Rwanda), and half in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (Uganda). During the 1960s, George Schaller estimated the Virunga population to be 450. Hunting reduced their numbers to about 250 by 1981 when the protection efforts led by the renowned late Dian Fossey brought the decline to a slow halt. Today about 320 mountain gorillas inhabit the Virungas, but their long term survival continues to be threatened by human induced calamities. Mountain gorillas is dedicated to the late Dian Fossey and is a result of a 1996 gathering at the 16th Congress of the International Primatological Society, where the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund organized a discussion to set directions for mountain gorilla research. The book portrays the natural history of a unique primate species that continues to battle extinction. Twenty-two gorilla specialists contributed various articles on gorilla biology, demography, ecology, social behavior, diet, health care, and conservation. This volume highlights the ongoing struggle to save an endangered species that lives in one of the most politically unstable and remote regions in Africa (where extremist Hutus massacred some 800,000 Tutsis in a 3-month period killing spree that started when the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash in April 1994). This book contains technical …