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Last week brought a bit of good environmental news from Africa: for at least some of our charismatic primate cousins, forest protection seems to be having an effect. Restrictions on logging, hunting and development have helped mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, increase their population by 13 percent over the last ten years. The 329-square-kilometre national park is home to about 340 gorillas, a third of the total world population: The rest live in a second population straddling the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Because the population is so small, and therefore vulnerable to disease outbreaks and other natural catastrophes, scientists are remaining only guardedly optimistic. “There are a number of things that could happen just because it’s a small, vulnerable population,” says Alastair McNeilage, one of the researchers who worked on the gorilla census. But, he says, they’re “fairly hopeful that the upward trend will continue.”

Source: David Biello, Mountain Gorillas on the Rebound. Scientific American, April 27. Photo of a silverback mountain gorilla in the Bwindi Park, by Kurt Ackermann.

You can find the entire article here http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environ...ntain-gorillas