Nearly 3,000 chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans are illegally killed or stolen from the wild each year, according to a new report (pdf) from the United Nations Environmental Programme’s (UNEP) Great Apes Survival Partnership (GASP). The report, released to coincide with this week’s meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild [...]

How does dressing up in a really bad gorilla costume help to save endangered mountain gorillas? Well, it’s not actually the costume itself that’s important; it’s what the man inside the costume is also carrying. Take a look at the photo to the left. In one hand, the costumed gorilla holds an energy-efficient stove. In [...]

Very few people have ever seen a Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli), the rarest and most endangered of the world’s four gorilla subspecies. Only about 250 to 300 of these animals exist in the world, and they have almost never been photographed in the wild. Well, you’re in for a treat. The Wildlife Conservation [...]

Billionaire media mogul Ted Turner has made a $1 million donation to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to help support a new initiative to save endangered Grauer’s gorillas (also known as eastern lowland gorillas, Gorilla beringei graueri), a subspecies living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) whose population is on the decline. [...]

With a population numbering fewer than 300 individuals, Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) are the rarest and most endangered of the world’s four gorilla subspecies. Although they remain threatened by habitat loss and illegal bushmeat hunting, new research shows the gorillas have a bit more potential habitat to roam, and in fact inhabit a [...]

Human illnesses are being transmitted to critically endangered mountain gorillas, putting these rare animals further at risk, new research shows. Centuries ago, mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) lived in relative isolation and were rarely seen by people. Today, they live in just two protected parks, where they are surrounded by human settlements in Rwanda, Uganda [...]

What do comic books, a reggae band and alternative fuels have in common? They are all part of a project to help save critically endangered mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Last April, I wrote about a project in the DRC that aimed to save mountain gorillas in [...]

The 2009 edition of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species was released today, and the news isn’t good: 17,291 species out of 47,677 assessed species, or 36 percent, are threatened with extinction. Science currently recognizes around 1.8 million species on Earth (out of an estimated five million to 30 million total species—the true total [...]