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A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in what conservationists are celebrating as an “extraordinary” event for the endangered primates.
Just two months after tiny twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif, in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region’s high-altitude rainforests.
Park rangers have placed the young primates under additional monitoring to help them through the critical initial months, as the infants face significant challenges to becoming fully grown adults. Twins are extremely rare in mountain gorillas, accounting for less than 1% of births, and place extra demands on the mother.
The gorilla subspecies, found in only two isolated pockets of the Virunga massif and the Bwindi Impenetrable national park in south-west Uganda, has high rates of infant mortality, with about a quarter falling victim to disease, trauma or infanticide.
In January, Virunga national park announced that a female mountain gorilla called Mafuko had given birth to twins. The infant males are now 11 weeks old and said to be thriving, with other gorillas in the troop taking extra care of the mother to support her caregiving, according to rangers. Park authorities believe that twin births are more likely to happen when females are in particularly good physical condition.
Jacques Katutu, the head of gorilla monitoring at Virunga, said: “Two instances of twin births within three months is an extraordinary event and provides another vital indicator that dedicated conservation efforts, which have continued despite the current instability in eastern Congo, continue to support the growth of the endangered mountain gorilla population within Virunga national park.”
Specialist veterinary care has played a leading role in the revival of the subspecies. In Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC, organisations such as the Gorilla Doctors have prevented dozens of deaths by helping animals affected by human behaviour, such as by releasing gorillas accidentally caught in poachers’ traps. One study attributes half of the mountain gorillas’ population increase to the vets.
Barely 250 mountain gorillas were left in the 1970s, and many thought the animals faced extinction. Decades of intense conservation work helped population numbers surpass 1,000 in 2018, and conservation authorities have since downgraded the subspecies’ status from critically endangered to endangered.
The DRC section of the Virunga mountain range remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for wildlife rangers. Over the past 20 years, more than 220 rangers have been killed in the park, where rebel groups such as M23 and other militias, as well as bandits, operate with impunity.
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