Gorillas - Threats

Multiple threats

Losing their habitat, hunted by people, and suffering from disease

Habitat loss
Habitat loss is a major threat to gorillas. Forests are rapidly being destroyed by commercial logging interests, for subsistence agriculture,and gorilla road building activities. There is a strong link between habitat loss and the bushmeat trade (see below), as forests opened up by timber companies are more easily accessible to hunters, who often sell meat to employees of the logging companies.
Find out more about habitat loss and degradation

Bushmeat
The commercial trade in bushmeat, which occurs throughout west and central Africa, may now be more of a threat to African primates than habitat loss and degradation. However, the number of gorillas killed annually is unknown. Estimating numbers of gorillas poached is difficult because they are often butchered and eaten on the spot, or their meat is smoked for later sale in towns.

Although the great apes constitute only a small proportion of all animals killed for the bushmeat trade, they present easy targets for hunters, and in some areas, such as eastern Cameroon, gorillas are favoured by hunters because of the weight of saleable meat.

Gorillas are also frequently maimed or killed throughout their range by traps and snares intended for other forest animals such as antelope.

Hunting for medicine and the live animal trade
Gorillas are also sought after as pets, trophies, and their body parts which are used in medicine and as magical charms.

Disease - The Ebola crisis
In late 2002 an outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in humans was reported in the north of the Republic of Congo on the border with Gabon. The human infections coincided with a large-scale die-off of great apes in the region.

Two great apes are found in Central Africa, the area currently affected by Ebola: western lowland gorilla and the central chimpanzee. Both have been severely affected by the virus. It has decimated up to 90% of the largest populations of western lowland gorilla in Northern Congo and Gabon - for example, in Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary in Congo, in late 2002, 136 out of 143 gorillas disappeared apparently as a result of Ebola. The disease continues to spread and is now reported in Odzala National Park, a site known to have the highest density of great apes in Africa.