Description:
There are two populations of Mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei): one in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda (extending into the Sarambwe Forest in DR Congo), and the second in the Virunga Volcanoes conservation area comprising the three national parks that straddle Rwanda, Uganda and eastern DR Congo. The Eastern Lowland gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), also known as the Grauer’s gorilla, is only found in the eastern low- All great ape species have experienced considerable declines in population size and range over the past few decades. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species lists all of the great apes as either Endangered or Critically Endangered and all great apes except the Mountain gorillas show decreasing population trends. Most notably, fewer than 300 Cross River gorillas are left in West Africa; as few as 2,000 Eastern Lowland gorillas remain; and it is believed that as few as 6,600 Sumatran orangutans can be found in the wild. The Western Lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) is found in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, DR Congo and the Cabinda region of Angola. The Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) is found in 11 pockets of forest on either side of the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. Since 1996, bonobos (Pan paniscus) have been designated an Endangered Species by the IUCN Red List. The species is only found in the low-lying central Congo Basin of DR Congo, where small groups are found south of the Congo River. The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is found in 21 countries across Equatorial Africa, yet has been classified Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1996. The four sub-species of the chimpanzee include the Eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii); the Central chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes); the Cameroon – Nigeria chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti); and the West African chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). Combined, these four sub-species are distributed across the African continent from southern Senegal and Guinea in West Africa, across the Congo Basin to western Uganda and western Tanzania in East Africa. The orangutan is the only great ape found in Asia, and historically is thought to have once ranged across Indochina. Today, two distinct species are found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, respectively. The Bornean orangutan is divided into three further sub-species.