April 16, 2013

New Infant and Other Good News

Yesterday, female mountain gorilla Bukima, from Isabukuru’s group, gave birth to her fourth infant. This is the third infant born this year in the groups monitored by the Fossey Fund, with two from Isabukuru’s group.

In other good news, we finally located the dispersed female Umusatsi. She left Kuryama’s group on March 17 and she was not seen since then. Today trackers saw her. She was feeding calmly though she ran away as soon as she saw trackers approaching. She is far from all groups. We are very happy to see that she is fine, but we can’t really explain yet this unusual behavior. Why is she traveling alone? What advantage can she get from it?

About the two new groups formed this year: Musilikale group (subgroup of Pablo’s group) is fine and is ranging very far away from Pablo’s group.

Gushimira’s group has apparently changed areas and we have not located them since March 24. We have teams looking for them almost every day, with the support of staff from our anti-poaching teams and RDB (park management) but so far it really seems the group has moved to a new area.

We also resumed the monitoring of Giraneza’s group (a group formed last year). We stopped last year when it moved to DR Congo, but now they are back in Rwanda and the gorillas are all fine including the infant.

Veronica