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  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • LEVI: My name is Levi.

  • And I am one of the guides in the Impenetrable Forest.

  • Now this here Bwindi Forest is the forest very special for

  • being a home to critically endangered mountain gorillas.

  • Yeah, we are going to start the gorilla tracking journey.

  • And which will take us possibly the whole day into

  • the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, an island within the

  • communities.

  • When you look at the map of Africa, you get Uganda, then

  • bordering Congo, DRC, that is the location of Bwindi.

  • We started in an open place, and you can see here where we

  • are going, this is a primary forest now.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: Mountain gorillas only exist on that

  • patch of habitat in the mountains of the Virungas.

  • And they only exist in those three countries, in just a

  • real small area.

  • They're not in zoos.

  • The zoo population of gorillas are western lowland gorillas,

  • for the most part.

  • So this is it.

  • Their whole survival rests in this patch of habitat that's

  • really isolated on these mountaintops.

  • And there's only 720 of them that exist in the world.

  • And they're all in this area And it's

  • surrounded by a sea of humans.

  • LEVI: These mountain gorillas, they are the great apes.

  • Human beings are also the great apes.

  • The behaviors, the way they behave when you look at them,

  • it's very, very marvelous.

  • They behave like people, like human beings.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: The first time that you see a gorilla

  • through that veil of vegetation, and he's looking

  • at you, and you look at him, and you catch him in the eye,

  • and it's really clear that there's a species connection.

  • We share a good part of our genes, and you can see so much

  • of human behavior reflected or derived from behavior of some

  • of the great apes.

  • LEVI: Mountain Gorillas are 99% vegetarians.

  • Most of the food they eat is leaves, bark

  • of trees, and fruits.

  • But 1% to make 100% of their food is the ants.

  • So they change that diet by eating ants,

  • actually to get proteins.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: Opening up the forest with coffee

  • plantations and logging companies from Yugoslavia and

  • the French to Spanish to Dutch, when they came in to

  • get that very valuable hardwood out of the forest.

  • And of course, they're bringing labor

  • from around the country.

  • So the population demographics changed drastically.

  • So it's a very dense human population with agriculture

  • bordering right up to the parks.

  • LEVI: Lifespan of these mountain gorillas is 50 years,

  • here in the wild.

  • But when the people started settling around, then they

  • started clearing their habitat for farming.

  • And also killing them.

  • Then they started becoming very few.

  • Their numbers started reducing.

  • Bwindi has about half of the world's population,

  • which is about 340.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: Bushmeat refers to the capture and

  • killing of wild game for commercial purposes.

  • They set snares on wildlife trails that are totally

  • indiscriminate.

  • And even gorillas get caught in them.

  • It'll tighten around its hand or foot, and

  • the hand will atrophy.

  • So there's a lot of mutilation and mortality from these

  • snares that are ubiquitous around the forest.

  • And so the real threats right now are human population

  • growth, it's the main threat.

  • Insecurity.

  • This area has been an area of political

  • instability for a long time.

  • In all three countries, there's been national

  • conflicts and regional conflicts.

  • Uganda went through years of the most horrible dictatorship

  • under Idi Amin, where wildlife populations were decimated

  • throughout the country.

  • Rwanda went through a genocide.

  • DRC has been at war since 1993 and before.

  • Millions of people died in those wars.

  • Millions of people displaced.

  • It goes on to right now.

  • LEVI: OK, this side where we are overlooking is Bwindi

  • Impenetrable Forest.

  • And as you go to the slope, on this side is DRC.

  • And where you see across, you see the bananas, that's the

  • village on the Uganda side.

  • But if you go beyond, then you are in the DRC.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • LEVI: When we get to the gorillas, we will have a sound

  • that we make.

  • We imitate their vocalization so that they come down, they

  • know we are friendly, we have no problem to them.

  • And that's Sowendi That vocalization is [GROWLING ].

  • Like cause they also communicate.

  • They live with families, headed by silverbacks.

  • And having only one dominant silverback, only one lead

  • male, who leads the whole family.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: The first time I saw mountain gorillas

  • was in the Bwindi National Park in Uganda.

  • And when we got up there, the silverback gave us a really

  • great sideways sort of false charge to let us know that he

  • was the boss.

  • Interestingly, that silverback was missing a hand from a

  • snare wound.

  • What you need to do when you're around gorillas is do

  • everything you can do to look submissive.

  • Slowly go down to the ground, pretend like you're feeding on

  • leaves, and sort of act like a monkey, which comes sort of

  • naturally to some of us anyways.

  • But running is the wrong thing.

  • LEVI: If one dominant silverback

  • start getting weak--

  • he's very weak, he cannot protect the family--

  • he leaves the powers to the youngest, who is very strong

  • enough to defend the family.

  • But sometime they can fight.

  • We don't have any evidence that they have

  • ever fought to death.

  • But they can fight and harm each other.

  • During the fighting of some primates, they kill those

  • babies so that they can now have the females in the estrus

  • period and start the mating process and also

  • produce their own.

  • That's how we get new groups, new families started.

  • We are communicating with the trackers.

  • They are just in front of us some few meters.

  • When you see the trackers that means the gorillas are near.

  • The guys have already done a wonderful job of

  • locating them to us.

  • MEDI: He has located the gorillas.

  • They have started from where they left them yesterday.

  • The smell also helps them.

  • Mostly the smell from the armpits of the silverback.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • LEVI: When you get to the gorillas, we branch into the

  • bush to directly where the gorillas are.

  • As I told you that they very, very closely related to us,

  • and we are visiting them everyday, so at times we also

  • monitor to see maybe they could get like some germs,

  • some bacterias, parasites from human beings.

  • The jungle here is very dense.

  • So you may be asking yourselves, how do we know the

  • population.

  • We found the last night nests, which are here.

  • And then when we want to know group categories, we have to

  • look at the dung.

  • For the babies it's small.

  • The juveniles, also small a bit.

  • Then adult female also small somehow.

  • But for the silverback it's big.

  • And as he said that when trackers are following, they

  • have got signs they go looking for.

  • So for them they were looking for the feedings like these

  • ones, which they have left behind.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: There's only 720 of them that

  • exist in the world.

  • And they're all in this area.

  • And there's pressures for other resources.

  • With minerals, [INAUDIBLE], gold, oil and gas, it has huge

  • threats for the future.

  • What happened in the Virunga National Park in DRC, where 10

  • gorillas were killed was a combination of an economic and

  • a political statement.

  • It wasn't poaching by local communities for food or for

  • subsistence.

  • The tensions are still there from the conflict between

  • Rwanda and DRC.

  • There's many rebel factions that are hiding

  • out in those forests.

  • Supplying charcoal to the cities, transporting it to do

  • the population centers was a multimillion dollar operation

  • that was helping to support a lot of these rebel factions

  • and keep them in business, allow them to function.

  • And they were working through the local population.

  • It's also a sign the presence of conservation was getting on

  • their nerves, so they were not able to operate with impunity.

  • So they were making a sign.

  • You guys care so much about these mountain gorillas, well

  • we're gonna make a sign that's really going to have

  • an impact on you.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • MEDI: So some gorillas are going up in the tree.

  • [GROWLING]

  • [GORILLA NOISES]

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: Gorillas really hold a real

  • fascination, I think, from history.

  • All of us grew up with Tarzan movies and King Kong.

  • And they've always held a mystery.

  • And they're always so close to humans, but the

  • image of being so strong.

  • And often a mistaken image of them being so ferocious.

  • [GROWLING]

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: A silverback gorilla is big.

  • It weighs 400 pounds and has big canines and a huge jaw to

  • defend his harem.

  • So he's defending his resources, as well.

  • That exists in our primate memory that

  • carries on to today.

  • -He's picking his nose.

  • -He is.

  • He just ate it.

  • DR. RICHARD CARROLL: Gorillas live in pretty low density.

  • There's aggression between the silverbacks trying to compete

  • for females and things like that.

  • But there's enough room.

  • We are in such high population densities

  • in a shrinking planet.

  • Right now with the amount of people on this planet we need

  • two planets to support us.

  • And it's going to lead to more and more

  • conflict over resources.

  • We're producing climate change that's going to change those

  • resources and make them scarcer.

  • All the time it's more people.

  • And I felt from the beginning that if we as humans can't

  • protect our closest family relatives then we really will

  • fail as a species ourselves.

  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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