In the last few weeks, the rangers and I have been working hard to do a complete assessment of our six habituated gorilla families. We included six new rangers in the survey process for training purposes as many will be deployed in the gorilla sector eventually.

Some gorilla families are much easier to access than others, with the Kabirizi family the most difficult due to its very large size. One visit doesn’t always allow you the opportunity to see the whole family as they can be hiding in the bushes or you cannot get a full face view in order to identify the gorilla by its nose print.

We have, however, made some clear calculations and have discovered some new movements among the Kabirizi family.

Kabirizi Family
This family is our largest, but has shrunk a bit recently. One blackback, Jeshi, died in a fight, and two others appear to have migrated to a non-habituated gorilla group. This brings the family down from 35 to 32. It is now made up of 1 silverback, 1 blackback, 11 adult females, 4 sub-adults, 5 juveniles, and 10 babies. Silverback Kabirizi also showed injuries to his left jaw, left arm, and left foot from an unknown interaction with another gorilla.

Here is a chart on four families from this recent survey. The codes refer to:
SB – Silverback; BB – Blackback; ADF – Adult Female; Sub – Sub Adult; Juv – Juvenile; Baby – Baby

We were able to take many photographs, and will post some here and more in a later blog post.