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Epilogue

THE MOUNTAIN gorilla is confined to two remote clusters of mountains, both under threat of deforestation, poaching, and political instability of their close relatives, the humans. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is particularly unstable sitting in the remote border territory between Uganda, Congo and Rwanda. My group had been escorted under armed guard and fortunately the AK-47 was never needed. The exponential expansion of humanity had dangerously encroached on these remote areas from all directions. Thankfully the deforestation from the Uganda side had been arrested and the killing of a gorilla is punishable to the same level as that for the murder of a human thanks to recent interventions of the existing government.

They say there are less than a thousand Mountain Gorilla left inthe wild. This puts them into the critically endangered list. Every effort is now made to preserve these gentle giants, who are genetically the closest living species to humans. Humans and gorillas had a common ancestor here in Eastern Africa just nine million years ago. Through spending an hour with these amazing beasts I had an insight into what human life would have been like for our common ancestor when we had dwelled the rift valley when that was lush forest.

Protecting the Mountain Gorilla has come at a huge cost to the indigenous pygmy peoples who once peacefully shared the forests with them. The pygmies have been exiled from their forest home of countless thousands of years to now live in squalor covered up with their drug addictions. Through interbreeding the pygmy populations of Africa are likely to disappear within a couple of generations.

Will the Mountain Gorilla continue to live in the remote mountain forests, or will it like the glaciers of Kilimanjaro disappear forever.

Only time will tell.

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