Critically Endangered
Western gorilla
Gorilla gorilla
Western gorilla is a primate in the family Hominidae (order Primates) — Gorilla gorilla, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Western gorillas are generally lighter coloured than eastern gorillas. Western gorillas have black, dark grey or dark brown-grey hair with a brownish forehead. The hair of the western species is significantly lighter in colour.
Males average 1.67 m (5.5 ft) although reaching a height up to 1.76 m (5.8 ft), with males weighing 145–191 kg (320–421 lb) and females weighing 58–72 kg (128–159 lb). Captive western gorillas average 157 kg (346 lb) in males and 80 kg (176 lb) in females.
Range and habitat
The western gorilla is a great ape found in Africa, one of two species of the hominine genus Gorilla. Large and robust with males weighing around 168 kilograms (370 lb), the species is found in a region of midwest Africa, geographically isolated from the eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei). Two subspecies are recognised: the western lowland gorilla (Western gorilla gorilla) is found in most of West Africa. While the Cross River gorilla (Western gorilla diehli) is limited to a smaller range in the north at the border of Cameroon and Nigeria.
Surveys conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2006 and 2007 found around 125,000 previously unreported gorillas have been living in the swamp forests of Lake Tele Community Reserve and in neighbouring Marantaceae (dryland) forests in the Republic of the Congo.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Females transfer to another group before breeding, that begins at eight to nine years old. They care for their young infants for the first three to four years of their lives.
In crisis
Nearly all of the individuals of this taxon belong to the western lowland gorilla subspecies, whose population is approximately 276,000 individuals. Just 250 to 300 of the only other western gorilla subspecies, the Cross River gorilla, are thought to remain. The World Conservation Union lists the western gorilla as critically endangered, the most severe denomination next to global extinction, on its 2007 Red List of Threatened Species.
The Ebola virus might be depleting western gorilla populations to a point where their recovery might become impossible, and the virus reduced populations in protected areas by 33% from 1992 to 2007, that may be equal to a decline of 45% for a period of just 20 years spanning 1992 to 2011. Furthermore, reproductive rates are very low, with a maximum intrinsic rate of increase of about 3% and the high levels of decline from hunting and disease-induced mortality have caused declines in population of more than 60% over the last 20 to 25 years.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Western gorilla is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Western gorilla, Wikidata item Q737838. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
