For decades, mountain gorillas teetered on the edge of extinction, fewer than 400 individuals remained in the early 1980s. Anti-poaching patrols, community programmes, and carefully managed ecotourism changed everything. In 2018, the IUCN moved them from Critically Endangered to Endangered, and the latest count found 1,063 individuals.
On the Edge
For decades, mountain gorillas edged toward extinction. Habitat destruction, poaching, and civil conflict in the Virunga volcanoes pushed them to fewer than 400 individuals by the early 1980s.
Then something rare happened: conservation worked. Anti-poaching patrols, community engagement, and strictly managed ecotourism turned the tide. By 2018, the IUCN upgraded the species from Critically Endangered to Endangered, a rare improvement for a great ape.
>> "Rangers patrol the forests to find and remove snares, and the gorillas have become a flagship for what determined conservation can achieve."
The latest combined count, from surveys in 2015-16 and 2018, found 1,063 mountain gorillas across Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and results of a new Bwindi census are awaited. Rangers patrol the forests to find and remove snares. The gorillas have become a flagship for what determined conservation can achieve.
_Sources: WWF-UK, "The great gorilla count", 16 October 2025. UC Davis Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center, "Mountain gorilla census results announced", 16 December 2019. International Gorilla Conservation Programme and GVTC media release, "Landmark census of great apes in Bwindi, Uganda launched", 6 May 2025. Max Planck Society, "Number of wild mountain gorillas exceeds 1,000", 31 May 2018._