This Elusive Gorilla Did Not Want Anyone Approaching Until They Noticed His Hands Don’t Look

Attention

As touching as Bobo’s tale is, it serves the far more essential service of bringing the public attention to the struggle that gorillas have just to stay alive. NPOs like the one caring for Bobo and his friends require a daily effort from many people to stay open. Gorillas may quickly go extinct without these groups.

Gorillas simply have so many threats, from poachers and hunters slaughtering them for their flesh, as well as deforestation threat to Cameroon’s tropical rainforests. With over 20 million hectares of greenery being steadily hacked away, it seems like gorillas may soon struggle to find a place to call home…

The Road Ahead

While it may seem like there is little hope for the gorilla, given how many dangers it faces in the wild, we should not give up on them just yet.

The best advice you can enjoy is from Sir David Attenborough, who in 1978 arrived in Cameroon, saying that, “It is incredibly heartening to see how the efforts of so many different groups – communities, governments, NGOs – have paid off. The threats to mountain gorillas haven’t disappeared entirely, of course, so now the challenge must be to ensure that these achievements are sustained long into the future.”