June 1, 2015

Good news: Group members merge

Fossey Fund trackers were delighted to see that the remaining members of Ugenda's gorilla group had merged with another group this weekend, led by silverback Mafunzo. Ugenda's members had suffered from the loss of two silverbacks (Ugenda and Wageni) and had been recently led by female Ukuri.

Gorilla Protection and Monitoring Officer at Karisoke, Jean Paul Hirwa, reported that the two groups seemed to merge peacefully. The new group now contains 10 members (six from Ugenda and four from Mafunzo).

This is also good news for our tracker teams because it lets them get back to a more normal routine in the forest, rather than monitoring partial groups.