“That might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming,” Tara Stoinksi, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, tells me.
The behavior she’s referring to occurs in mountain gorilla groups, such as a “dominance transfer,” where a younger male silverback takes over leadership from an older male, and infanticide, where an outsider or ostracized gorilla kills the offspring of a new mother within the group. The former of these was captured on camera within days of filming for the new Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough.
Stoinski joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her role as a scientific adviser on the years-long project, the rarity of the behaviors captured on camera, and her thoughts on gorilla conservation in the Greater Virunga Landscape of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“These gorillas now live basically in a small island of forests surrounded by some of the highest rural human population densities in Africa,” Stoinski says while discussing conservation challenges for mountain gorillas.
Filming for the documentary took place in Rwanda, where the pressures and challenges mountain gorillas face differ from those in Virunga National Park in the neighboring DRC. Threats to gorillas in the latter include armed conflict, poaching, logging, and hunting for the wild meat trade.
Stoinski says that within Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, where the documentary was filmed, the threats are different.
“Climate change is an issue for the gorillas … also, climate change affects the people that live near the gorillas. And so if they are struggling and their livelihoods are affected, that may mean that there’s more pressure put on the park. Disease is certainly a risk for the gorillas.”
Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Banner image: A male gorilla, Ubwuzu, as featured in the Netflix documentary. Image by Ben Cherry/Courtesy of Netflix/Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Tara Stoinski: I think the film does such an amazing job of showing the similarities between us and gorillas, and I think that’s such an important message for people to understand, given how endangered not just mountain gorillas but all types of gorillas are, that we share a lot in common with them. I always say we share some of the things that we admire the most in our own species, and you see all of that in the film. You see these long-term friendships that gorillas form. You see them caring for the most vulnerable in their society. So I’m really thrilled that people get to see what we see every day, and what we’ve seen over the last sixty years, which is how much these animals are like us.
Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal land. Today on the newscast, we speak with Tara Stoinski, the CEO and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Along with her colleague Veronica Vecellio, the two served as scientific advisors to the recently released Netflix documentary, A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough. This documentary, narrated by David Attenborough and directed by Oscar-winner James Reed, follows the interpersonal relations and behavior of a group of gorillas on the Rwandan side of the Virunga Mountains. This group of gorillas is descended from a gorilla who arguably became an icon when he embraced a younger Attenborough in the field back in 1978. The touching moment when this three-year-old gorilla approached and then joyfully played with Attenborough was captured on camera. His name was Pablo, and he would go on to form the largest ever-known group of mountain gorillas. Spanning over two years of filming, the documentary captures never-before-seen gorilla behavior, such as a dominance takeover in which a younger silverback, Ubwuzu, usurps the leadership position of the elder, Gicurasi. Stoinski explains that this happened very early on in the filming process, and she discusses with me the unique behaviors this documentary highlights, the extensive process of filming it, and briefly, the state of conservation in Virunga. While A Gorilla Story, set in Rwanda, does not highlight the political or social factors of other nations sharing the Virunga landscape, Stoinski does briefly address her thoughts on the March 23 Movement conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and also generally the pressures that gorillas face threatening their conservation. Tara Stoinski, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.
Tara: Thanks so much for having me.
Mike: I just wanted to say congratulations on this project. It’s a pretty big undertaking, and the film is quite something to watch, I have to say. It was a really moving piece of work. I’m curious to hear about your role as a scientific advisor. What kind of input did you provide on this film?
Tara: Great, thanks, and I’m glad you enjoyed the film. We’re incredibly proud of it. We have been involved really since day one. We started discussions with Silverback Films, who produced the film, back in 2020. They came to us and said, “We’re interested in doing a film about gorillas. What are the things that are happening with gorillas that you think would be interesting to cover?” And my colleague, Veronica Vecellio, who was on the call with me, and I immediately both said, “The story of Pablo’s group.” This is an incredible group. It’s broken all sorts of records. It dates back to Dian Fossey’s time in a lot of ways. We helped think of the concept behind the group and then have been involved all along in supporting the team and understanding the behaviors that they saw, because a lot ended up happening unexpectedly, I think, to all of us. There were a lot of changes in the group that happened during the two years that they were filming. So really interpreting that, helping explain why we think that happened, what it meant, and then we also really helped coordinate on the ground in the field. So when they were out with Pablo’s group, they were always out with our trackers as well as members of the Rwandan park authorities. They would help them identify the gorillas, really anticipate when behaviors might be happening so they could frame those shots. So it’s really been a partnership over the last six years on the film.
Mike: And so when you say you helped them interpret behaviors, can you give me an example? Was there a moment where something happened between Ubwuzu and Gicurasi where they came to you and said, “What’s happening here?” and you told them what had occurred?
Tara: Yeah, it’s more the context, what generally happens in a male dominance transfer, which happened in this group. The intra-group infanticide was obviously a big deal. We’ve only seen that two other times in almost sixty years of watching the gorillas. So helping to explain why that might have happened, what was going on in the group, the transfer of Inyange into the family group, and what the dynamics are generally like for a female when she transfers into a group. So just providing that broader context of these behaviors that could then help create the script. Because obviously you want the gorillas on the screen. You don’t want to be talking over everything. So trying to think, how can the script concisely interpret what’s happening while letting people really enjoy the beauty of the gorillas and the behaviors?
Mike: Now, you mentioned that there were some things that you weren’t expecting to see, or at least some surprising things that happened. What were some of those things?
Tara: The dominance shift, which happened, I think, within a few days of filming beginning. Gicurasi was in his mid to late 20s at the time they started filming, and that certainly isn’t past prime for a dominant silverback. But he had some illnesses, and I think Ubwuzu, who was up and coming, just took advantage of that opportunity while he wasn’t feeling great to come in and challenge his dominance. And so that was not something that we were really expecting at the time. And to be able to capture it on film, again, in sixty years we’ve only witnessed a handful of dominance takeovers. So the fact that it just happened to happen while the film crews were there was amazing. Female transfers, that was a really interesting opportunity to see Inyange transfer into the group. Now, that is pretty typical for female gorilla society. That’s how females move between families. But again, just having the opportunity to capture that during the course of filming, and then finally the intra-group infanticide. None of us were expecting that. It’s incredibly rare. And so understanding the context around that and what that meant for the family and for Inyange, et cetera.
Mike: Yeah. For folks that haven’t seen the film, much of this film focuses on the Pablo group, obviously. But I found Imfura’s story to be really, really moving. Obviously it’s a very tragic story and it’s very sad, but he doesn’t start out as being the type of gorilla who would do something like that. He has that relationship with the very young gorilla, and he seemed very sweet to him. And so I just found him to be a very tragic part of this picture. Do you have any comments about that story, about what you witnessed, about Imfura? Because I thought that was a really interesting part of the story.
Tara: Yeah, I don’t think those two things are incompatible, right? He did have a great relationship and came from a very close family. His mom died when he was 12, and so he helped care for his younger brother, who was only about three and a half years old at the time. And it’s very typical that silverback gorillas like to interact with youngsters. Like us, gorillas all have individual personalities, and so some males are more attracted to infants and like to play with them more than others. But it is a very common male reproductive strategy to try and get rid of the offspring of competitors. And with Ubwuzu coming in and taking over dominance and Inyange being a new female, there was a lot of disruption in the group. And Imfura took advantage of that opportunity to try and probably, what our estimate is, with Inyange losing her infant, maybe she would have thought, “This group isn’t the best group for me,” and maybe she would have left with Imfura, and that might have been an opportunity for him to start his own family. So I don’t think that those two things are incompatible, and I don’t think that he did that out of any bullying or other things that happened to him in the family. I think he was being a strategic male gorilla and thinking about his longer-term future, and how he could potentially have females join him, and he could become a successful male on his own. And I will say that what was very interesting is that after the filming ended, he went on and killed three other infants in that group, including the next infant up in Inyange’s. So while we have sympathy for Imfura, he was pretty disruptive in the group overall. He continued that behavior, which again, really surprised us because we’ve not seen that before from a male gorilla.
Mike: And this all occurred after he was pushed out and ostracized from the group, right?
Tara: The additional killings, yeah. He was pushed out, but he remained in the area and on the periphery. He joined the group again. So he’s been in and out of the group for the last few years. Filming ended two years ago. After he was in the group for a bit, two new females had joined Pablo’s group, and he was successful in herding them off and forming a group for a little bit of time, but they actually didn’t stay with him for very long. They rejoined Pablo’s family, and so now he is a solitary silverback. And again, being a solitary silverback is pretty typical. In fact, the majority of silverbacks, particularly in the other three types of gorillas, live a large part of their lives as solitary individuals. So it’s not an uncommon social life, or lack of a social life, for a male gorilla to live on their own. And we have some male gorillas that, after they leave their family, are never successful in forming a group, and they live their entire lives on their own.
Mike: Now, for folks listening who don’t know the context, Pablo is the ancestor of this group. That’s why it’s called the Pablo group. But he’s the one who, when he was three years old, embraced David Attenborough when he was in the field as a youngster, and he went on to start what I believe Attenborough called the largest group of mountain gorillas ever known. So can you talk about the significance of that?
Tara: Yeah. David Attenborough met Pablo when he was three, went to do a story about the role of the opposable thumb, and during that, Pablo just went and sat on his lap. And so the storyline changed a lot, and it became, I think, one of the most iconic moments of wildlife filmmaking, across the board. And that was in 1978. And so now revisiting Pablo’s family, almost 50 years later, is what the movie focuses on. In 1993, Pablo was born into Group 5, which is one of the original groups that Dian Fossey habituated and studied. In 1993, the dominant silverback of that group died, and at that time, the group fissioned. And so Pablo took a number of the family members and formed what is called Pablo’s group, and was the dominant silverback of that group for several years. Then he was actually replaced in terms of dominance by another individual named Cantsbee. But the two of them very much had an alliance and worked together, and that is likely a lot of the reason why that group was able to grow to 65 gorillas. So it’s not only the largest group of mountain gorillas, it’s the largest group of gorillas in the wild that we’ve ever heard of. An average gorilla family is usually about 10 individuals. And so Cantsbee and Pablo worked together to manage that group up until Pablo’s death in 2008.
Mike: Yeah, and that’s really unique, from what I understand, because Attenborough talks about that in the film, that when Pablo was challenged, an alliance was formed between him and the rival gorilla, Cantsbee, as you described. I find that to be something worth discussing. It seems like it could be a bit of an allegory for the way we humans interact with one another. Forming partnerships and alliances might be a better way to go about things rather than having a simple hierarchical structure where there is a single dominant figure at the top. Do you have any more insights into the significance of that partnership and that alliance?
Tara: Yeah, I think it’s a great point, and I would agree. We have seen it in other families. For example, in Beetsme’s family, a male named Titus, who also had a movie made about him, took over dominance from Beetsme. But again, Beetsme stayed in the group, and they managed that group together. Titus was clearly dominant, but Beetsme stayed in the group. And so it does seem to be a strategy that mountain gorilla males use. Interestingly, when Titus’s son started challenging him for dominance several decades later, that group didn’t end up staying together. It split. So it’s not a given that a male, when he is usurped, will stay necessarily in the group, or that the group will stay together like we saw with both Pablo and Beetsme. But I agree, I think it is a large part of why those groups were very stable for a very long time, very successful, because if you have two or more males defending a family, which is really the role of the silverback gorilla, you have better outcomes, you have better odds. You’re better able to fend off these solitary males that come and try to basically steal females from your family and will target infants of the family. The odds are better when you have bigger numbers.
Mike: Hello, listeners, and thank you for tuning in. As I always like to mention, Mongabay is a non-profit news organization. We rely on the funding from listeners like you. So if you’d like to support the podcast, go to patreon.com/mongabay to become a monthly sponsor of the show. Supplemental reporting on gorillas and conservation in Virunga can be found in the show notes. Thank you, and back to the conversation with Tara Stoinski. I know you’ve talked about some of the more surprising footage that you found, but is there anything about the making of this documentary that took you by surprise, that you weren’t expecting to see from start to finish?
Tara: Yeah, it was funny. When the filmmakers first started talking to us, they had done a lot of work with chimpanzees. Chimps are really energetic. I always equate chimps to being more dog-like, like you know what they’re thinking. They’re running around, lots of energy, lots of noise. And gorillas are a little bit more cat-like. Everything’s a bit more subtle. It’s who you’re sitting near, et cetera. And so they teased us. They’re like, “Are the gorillas going to do enough for us to make a full documentary on them?” And you never know with natural history, right? As gorilla people, we teased them, and we said, “Of course they are.” But we had our concerns as well because gorillas spend a lot of time resting, a lot of time feeding, which we love, and we love seeing those interactions, but maybe it doesn’t make for the most exciting 90-minute film. And so when the filmmakers showed up and all these things that we’ve been talking about happened, the dominance transfer, the female transfer, the infanticide, and Imfura being pushed out of the group, that might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming. But it’s all representative of gorilla behavior, so it’s wonderful that we were able to capture it and tell the story about how complex their lives are, about the different personalities, about the different relationships. One of the things that I particularly love is getting to see the role of female gorillas, which we don’t often talk about. It’s often very much focused on the silverbacks because of their size and strength. But hearing about Teta and her role and how she initially supported Gicurasi when Ubwuzu started to challenge him, and then gradually moved over to Ubwuzu, and what that meant for Ubwuzu ultimately being able to remain dominant, to take over the dominance, I think all of those subtleties are just great examples of gorilla behavior and lovely to capture on film.
Mike: Yeah, I found that interesting, that initial fight where he challenges Gicurasi, and Teta still, even though Ubwuzu won the fight, supported Gicurasi at first.
Tara: Yeah.
Mike: Which I thought was a really interesting display of loyalty. Is that common, that you see the loyalty factor win out over the raw power of the younger dominant male?
Tara: Definitely, 100%. I think even David Attenborough says this in the film, it’s not only about size and strength, right? It’s also about the personalities, and these older males really have the knowledge and the skill set to be these elder statesmen. And I think the females really value that. At the end of the day, they do need a strong male that’s going to protect them, and I think in that sense, Teta made the right decision because, in May of last year, Gicurasi, so almost a year ago, did disappear, and despite months of searching for him, we’ve not found him. So maybe she realized that his health wasn’t great, that he maybe wasn’t going to be around all that long, so switching allegiances to the male that was going to be able to protect the group in the long term was likely a good decision and helped reinforce Ubwuzu’s dominance in the longer term. But definitely, those older males, just as in our society and lots of animal societies, can really play the role of older statesmen and have a lot of political power, even if their physical strength may be slightly diminished.
Mike: So from your perspective, what did you learn, or what did the filmmakers learn, or what did anyone learn, really, about gorilla conservation from the making of this project?
Tara: I think the project itself is really about the gorillas and their society. But there are times in the film when we talk about the number of mountain gorillas left. There are 1,000 of them left on the planet. They are very much at risk, very heavily conservation dependent. When Imfura leaves the forest and goes out into the farmland, these gorillas now live basically in small islands of forest surrounded by some of the highest rural human population densities in Africa. And so while the direct hunting of gorillas doesn’t happen anymore in this region like it did in the time of Dian Fossey, there still are a lot of threats: small habitat, small population size, disease risk. There is poaching of other animals that happens that can indirectly affect the gorillas. So I think you hear subtleties around all of that in the film itself, but the purpose of the film was really to focus more on the gorillas as they are. But David talks about the challenges Dian faced. At the time she was there, there were only 250 gorillas in this region. Now there are 600, so it’s more than doubled, but it’s taken close to 50 years for that to happen. So they’re just slow to recover because of their natural life history.
Mike: I’m going to put a pin in the challenges real quick, but I want to ask you something about how conservation has changed since Dian Fossey’s time. How have approaches to conservation changed in Virunga since her time?
Tara: Yeah, I think in a number of ways. Number one, at the time that Dian was there, the national park authorities were not as involved in conservation, and so that’s why she led a lot of it, and she hired her own anti-poaching patrols to go into the forest. That is not the case at all anymore. The government, particularly in Rwanda, is very strongly supportive of conservation and manages that park as well as the other parks in Rwanda. So I think that’s a big piece of it. I think also just the involvement of communities in conservation. Our motto is “helping people, saving gorillas,” because ultimately we know that for gorillas to thrive, the people that share that ecosystem have to thrive as well. And so a lot of our work focuses not just on being out there and protecting gorillas and studying them, but also working with local communities to help build resiliency. So working on livelihood development, educational access, food security, the reasons that people are still dependent on those forest ecosystems, trying to assist them so they don’t have to go in the forest to collect water, for example. And actually, ecotourism plays a big role in that because 10% of the permit fees to see the gorillas in Rwanda is actually shared by the government with the local communities. So the communities are much more a part of conservation than they were, say, 50 years ago.
Mike: And so it’s alluded to in the film that the population density of the gorillas is presenting some challenges. There was a study in 2021 that specifically highlighted some health challenges for the gorillas due to this population density. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. What can you tell us about that? What kind of health challenges is the population density presenting?
Tara: Yeah, there are a couple of things about it. We’ve been looking at this for a while now, and what we’ve been able to show, and this is the huge value of long-term data, is that we have almost 60 years’ worth of data. Up until the early 2000s, there were basically three main groups that we were protecting and studying that were descendants of those families that Dian Fossey had looked at. That was when Pablo’s group, for example, got to 65 individuals. Then, over a relatively short period of time, those three groups fissioned and became 13 groups. So in the same area, you have triple or almost quadruple the number of families that are living in that area. And so what we saw as a result of that was an increase in intergroup interactions, and that increased both infant mortality as well as male mortality. We also saw that this increased the interbirth interval, so the time between when females would have babies, because the females started group hopping, and they generally won’t group hop if they’re pregnant. So as they were moving around, it was taking them longer between babies. And then we also saw that there was a significant effect. These interactions can be really stressful. They aren’t always stressful, but we recorded an eightfold increase sometimes in stress levels. So we monitor the stress levels of the gorillas by collecting their fecal samples, and then we can look at stress hormones. And obviously, you think about what happens to us if we have long-term exposure to chronic stress. It’s not good for your health, and so that’s a concern, that if these gorillas’ stress levels are remaining high, they could become more susceptible to diseases, to parasites, to respiratory diseases, et cetera. So definitely, it’s one of the challenges of conservation success. Mountain gorillas are actually the only non-human great ape on the planet that are increasing in size. So that’s amazing, that these animals are increasing in size when we look at all the other populations out there that are not faring as well. But because their area is pretty small, it has led to challenges for them too.
Mike: And so other than the population density, what are the other challenges that are present for mountain gorillas in Virunga?
Tara: Definitely the small population size in general because it just means that if there is an epidemic that happens or a natural disaster that happens, you just have fewer individuals, right? So you always want a larger denominator, and having 1,000, and those 1,000 gorillas don’t actually all live together. The Virunga region, which encompasses three national parks in Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, has about 600 gorillas. It’s been 10 years since the last census, so that number has hopefully gone up, but the last time it was published, it was 600. Then there’s a totally separate population in Uganda called the Bwindi population, and there’s about 400 to 450 in that population, although there was just recently a census done, so hopefully numbers will be updated soon on that population, and we’ll have a new number of mountain gorillas to put out there. But that small population size, within that, we know that there’s been inbreeding that’s had to happen when you get down to a few individuals. And while we haven’t really seen any big negative effects of that yet, we do see evidence of it in the gorillas. So a lot of them will have webbing between their fingers or toes, which we take as a sign of inbreeding. So again, that makes you maybe not as resistant or resilient should a disease come into the population. Climate change is an issue for the gorillas. We’re seeing changes in that environment as a result of the climate. Also, climate change affects the people that live near the gorillas. And so if they are struggling and their livelihoods are affected, that may mean that there’s more pressure put on the park. Disease is certainly a risk for the gorillas. And civil unrest. There’s been a lot of unrest on the Congolese side of the habitat that can, in the long term, threaten the gorillas. So they are still very much a conservation-dependent species, even though their numbers are moving in the right direction.
Mike: What about illegal logging and the timber trade? Is this impacting gorillas, and if so, how?
Tara: I would say not, at least not so much for the mountain gorilla population, definitely in Rwanda. The forest is really well protected, and there’s a wall, a small wall. It’s a small stone wall. People can go in, animals can come out, but that wall has been there for over 20 years, and it really marks the edge of the park. And so we don’t see a lot of illegal timber harvesting. This is also not a traditional tropical rainforest with these huge, tall trees. Because of the elevation, it’s a very different type of forest, a lot of what we call terrestrial herbaceous vegetation. So a lot of ground vegetation. It’s never really been used for timber extraction per se, the way that you might hear about in some of the West or Central African forests. It’s more been used maybe to collect firewood, to make charcoal, things along those lines. So we haven’t seen deforestation from the timber trade really be a challenge.
Mike: Now I know you’ve mentioned that you work mostly in Rwanda, and I understand that this is a difficult question to answer, and it’s not explored in the film, obviously, because the film is focusing on the gorillas. But there are armed groups like M23, which control a portion of the park. Do you have any insight into how that’s affecting gorilla conservation?
Tara: Yeah. So I will just add, we do actually work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but we work with a different subspecies of gorillas. They’re called Grauer’s gorillas. They are located a little bit further to the west in eastern DRC, and they are actually considered the most endangered of the gorillas, and they were just named as one of the twenty-five most endangered primates on the planet. So their numbers are, sadly, plummeting, and that is primarily a result directly of poaching, but that’s a whole other story about them. In terms of the mountain gorillas, yes, obviously this region has had a lot of challenges, and there have been a lot of armed groups in the park itself, and that’s Virunga National Park, which is the park on the Congolese side. A lot of rangers have lost their lives protecting this park, which doesn’t just include the gorilla area. The gorilla area is actually relatively small. There’s a much larger area to the north that’s more savanna habitat, and that’s where a lot of the challenges, particularly for rangers, have happened. The good news is my understanding is that there are now community patrols that are going into Virunga National Park to monitor the gorillas there, and it seems like they’re doing quite well. Just in the last few months, there have been announcements of not one, but two sets of twins born on the Congolese side, which is amazing. Twin gorilla births are pretty rare, so to have two of them in just the span of a few months is great. And they’re able to check on the gorillas, and it does seem like the habituated gorillas on that side of the park are doing, are faring okay. But clearly, we would love to have a fuller picture, and hopefully at some point we’ll be able to do one of these three-country censuses again. I mentioned the last one was in 2016. It would be really nice to get a sense of looking at the whole population, how it’s doing.
Mike: Now you’ve mentioned that poaching is a threat. I don’t know if you were specifying whether that was in areas that were controlled by M23 or if it was areas that weren’t. Is poaching intensifying in areas that are controlled by armed groups, or is that something that you’re seeing occurring in other areas? And if so, what is being done to protect the gorillas? My wording on this question left out a key fact, and that’s that poaching did intensify in areas occupied by M23 back in 2025, which Mongabay reported a year ago. Virunga National Park officials said poaching was on the rise, and on March 11, 2025, park officials found a young gorilla caught in a trap. Locals reportedly took advantage of the closure of eco-guard patrols in the areas of the park under M23 occupation to participate in the wild meat trade. My question here to Stoinski was to find out if poaching is still occurring, and she seems to validate the reports that traps are still being used. But she does say direct poaching of the other three types of gorillas is happening.
Tara: Yeah. So in the Virunga region where the mountain gorillas are, which again, there’s a park in Rwanda, a park in Congo, and a park in Uganda, we don’t really see direct poaching of gorillas at all anymore, which is great, because that was very much happening in the ’70s. And I think the last major poaching was in 2007 on the Congolese side. It actually made the cover of National Geographic. But there are snares that are set for antelope, for example, and the gorillas can get caught in them, and that can be life-threatening if they were to get an infection, et cetera. So indirect, we say, in that region for mountain gorillas, indirect poaching is a threat. But for the other three types of gorillas, there are four types in total, four different subspecies, direct poaching is the major threat, and it’s not really a rebel group element. It’s poaching for food, that these animals are poached for food. And so that’s where we see these, particularly, like I mentioned, the Grauer’s gorillas, that’s been the major cause of decline there, poaching for food.
Mike: And again, I know this is a tricky question, but M23 has tried to cultivate a pro-conservation image in Virunga, and they’ve imposed a strict ban on local populations producing charcoal and practicing agriculture. Do you find that to be the case, and has this benefited gorilla conservation efforts?
Tara: I can’t actually speak to that because I don’t have updated information on what’s been happening with the charcoal trade. It has traditionally been a big problem in Virunga in the last few decades. And in fact, that killing I referenced in 2007, one of the explanations, I don’t know if it was ever verified, was that it was a revenge killing because people were being told not to use the park for charcoal production. So I can’t actually speak to that, but definitely charcoal production has been a threat to the gorillas traditionally, and so not having that happen in the park would definitely be a beneficial thing because it’s removing trees, which is what they make charcoal from. That’s the big risk, that you would have some of that deforestation that we were talking about earlier.
Mike: You mentioned that there have been a lot of ranger killings in the park. What insight do you have into what’s being done to protect rangers? Do you fear for the safety of the rangers in the park currently? Can you tell us the current status?
Tara: Again, this is all talking on the Congolese side of the park where we do not work, so I’m not speaking from an area of expertise. But my understanding is that rangers have actually not been going into the gorilla sector of Virunga National Park for some time because of the risks. And so that’s why now there are these community patrols that have been organized by the park authorities that are going in and checking on the gorillas, and getting us the information, for example, that the twins were born and that the habituated gorillas on that side are doing okay. Yeah.
Mike: And is there anything in this film that is not stated about gorillas that you would like people to know, that you wish could’ve been included in the film?
Tara: Yeah. That’s a great question. To me, I think the film does such an amazing job of showing the similarities between us and gorillas, and I think that’s such an important message for people to understand, given how endangered not just mountain gorillas but all types of gorillas are, that we share a lot in common with them. I always say we share some of the things that we admire the most in our own species, and you see all of that in the film. You see these long-term friendships that gorillas form. You see them caring for the most vulnerable in their society. A really good example of that is when Pablo loses his mother when he’s only four years of age, he’s taken under the wing of Beethoven, who was the dominant male at the time. And we’ve seen that. That is not the only example. We’ve seen that dozens of times. We’ve published several papers on it, that these individuals that maybe lose their moms prematurely are really looked after by the dominant silverback, even if he’s not their biological dad, and the whole group comes around and is a social buffer for them in these times that are really traumatic. Losing your mom is really traumatic for a young gorilla. We see that they mourn the loss of a family member, and we see that when Inyange loses her infant, and I think that’s a really poignant moment in the film when you see how devastated she is, and then you see the whole family, even though she’s relatively new to that family, gathering around her. So I’m just really thrilled that people get to see what we see every day, and what we’ve seen over the last 60 years, which is how much these animals are like us. And hopefully that makes people care more and be invested in their conservation, and understand that even though these gorillas live halfway around the world from Americans, at least, which is where I’m from, we all have a role to play in conserving them in the long term.
Mike: Tara Stoinski, thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure speaking with you today.
Tara: Thank you so much for having me, and I hope everyone will go and watch the film. It really is incredibly special, and I hope they will fall in love with gorillas in the same way that we at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund have.
Mike: If you want to watch A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough, the documentary is streaming now on Netflix. If you’d like to read more reporting on gorillas or dive further into the M23 conflict, you can find links to our reporting in the show notes of this episode. As always, if you’re enjoying The Mongabay Newscast or any of our podcast content and you want to help us out, we encourage you to spread the word about the work we’re doing by telling a friend and leaving a review. Word of mouth is among the best ways to help expand our reach. But you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor at our Patreon page at patreon.com/mongabay. Mongabay is a non-profit news outlet, so even pledging a dollar per month does make a very big difference and it helps us offset production costs. So if you’re a fan of our audio reports from Nature’s Frontline, go to patreon.com/mongabay to learn more and support The Mongabay Newscast. You can also read our news and inspiration from Nature’s Frontline at mongabay.com or follow us on social media. Find Mongabay on LinkedIn at Mongabay News and on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Mastodon, Facebook, and TikTok, where our handle is @Mongabay, or on YouTube at Mongabay TV. Thank you, as always, for listening.
