Mick Hartley

Primates in peril? Not the western lowland gorilla:

The world's population of critically endangered western lowland gorillas received a huge boost today when the Wildlife Conservation Society released a census showing massive numbers of these secretive great apes alive and well in the Republic of Congo.

The new census tallied more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas in two adjacent areas in the northern part of the country, covering an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 square kilometers). Previous estimates from the 1980s placed the entire population of western lowland gorillas, which occur in seven Central African nations, at less than 100,000. Since then, however, scientists had believed that this number had at least halved, due to hunting and disease.

This comes as something of a shock to those of us who thought gorillas were reduced to a few isolated bands desperately clinging on, their grim struggle for survival brightened only by the occasional morale-boosting visit from David Attenborough. 125,000 gorillas is one hell of a lot of gorillas. Slough has a population of 125,000. It's more than the population of Watford, or Cambridge, or Eastbourne. Lay 125,000 gorillas end to end and they'd stretch right round the M25. And make the tailbacks a lot more entertaining.

[For the geographically challenged: the Republic of Congo is the country north of the Congo river, formerly part of the French Congo, capital Brazzaville, not the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (mostly) south of the river, formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo, capital Kinshasa.]