The world’s largest gorillas are now one step from extinction, with ‘critically endangered’ designation

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An endangered silverback mountain gorilla from the Nyakamwe-Bihango family feeds within the forest in Virunga national park near Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:36pm, 5 Sep 2016Updated: 10:19pm, 5 Sep 2016

The world’s largest gorillas have been pushed to the brink of extinction by a surge of illegal hunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and are now critically endangered, officials said.

With just 5,000 Eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei) left on Earth, the majestic species now faces the risk of disappearing completely, officials said Sunday at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s global conference in Honolulu.

Four out of six of the Earth’s great apes are now critically endangered, “only one step away from going extinct,” including the Eastern Gorilla, Western Gorilla, Bornean Orangutan and Sumatran Orangutan, said the IUCN in an update to its Red List, the world’s most comprehensive inventory of plant and animal species.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are listed as endangered.

An endangered silverback mountain gorilla walks inside a forest in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in the Ruhija sector of the park in Uganda. Photo: Reuters

“Today is a sad day because the IUCN Red List shows we are wiping out some of our closest relatives,” Inger Andersen, IUCN director general, told reporters.

War, hunting and loss of land to refugees in the past 20 years have led to a “devastating population decline of more than 70 per cent,” for the Eastern gorilla, said the IUCN’s update.