FADING GORILLA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 139, 16 June 1930, Page 3

FADING GORILLA

TOLL OF HUNTERS

FEW GROUPS REMAIN

EXPLOITER'S ¥1X1)

(By Charles Perkins.)

(Copyright.) Gorillas exist onlY in two, small corners of the British Empire, in the Ogoja Province of Nigeria and in the Kigezi District of Uganda. Both gorilla areas are situated oil and divided by ono or more international frontiers. The main habitat or distributing centre seems hi each case to be- in foreign "territory. . A writer to the London "Times" in September last states that the Nigeria^ group numbers about sixty. Ho adds that native hunting parties levy a heavy toll on them and that last year eleven were killed in a day. Here, in the district of Kigezi, there are two quite distinct and well defined but very circumscribed areas in which gorillas are known. For convenience of reference one may refer to these two areas as the northern. (Kayonsa) and the. southern (Bufunibria) groups. The British southern! area is the zone along the steep and wooded northern slopes of the three eastern—most volcanoes ■of the Birunga range — Muhabura, Bgahinga, and Sabyinyo. Here, however, the gorilla is in general only a seasonal, a dry seasonal, visitor. After the lesser rains, when the bamboo shoots are succulent, he emerges from, his Congo breeding grounds, the cold and misty forest zone, of au altitude of over 14,000 feet; and it is then, between late" October and early x March, that he wanders most often across into British territory for his periodic visits. He moves on his leisurely way, browsing as he moves, gargantuan vegetarian, neither a hunted nor a hunting beast. ESTIMATED NUMBERS. It is not an easy matter to ■estimate the, density of a gorilla- population here. Only half of two. of the three mountains is in. British territory (any apes on the southern slopes being Belgian mandated subjects), and only a third part of the third volcano, namely Sabyinyo, is "protected" by us. The distance from end to end, on our side, is ouly a morning's walk. After three and a half years' residence and constant trekking in the district, the only thing which I can state with any degree of certainty is that in 1919-20 and in 1928-29 gorillas were only seasonal and occasional visitors. The average size of the various troops seen, or credibly reported, work out at thirteen. Such confirmed native, information as one has good reason to accept tends to substantiate this over a considerable period of years. For the northern area, an estimate is. easier. There is only one . known troop. In 1919-20, in both of which years I saw it at close quarters, it consisted, of eighteen individuals.' It now comprises twenty-five. They are far fiercer and more aggressive than the southerners —in 1920 they killed and mutilated an inoffensive man called Baleba on Nya Mabele Hill.1 Last year they attacked some young goat herds below the forest zone. Unlike the tiny southern corner, which, shared on two sides with another nation, is cut through by. two main and immemorial arteries of human communications, the fifty-square-mile block of our impenetrable northern area constitutes a natural reserve, shelters several respectable gorilla families who never leave us, and so far it has not- as much as been mentioned by enthusiasts. KILLED BY NATIVES. The danger to the gorilla from local Africans is very little. Some ten years ago, when there were no restrictions, a Swedish expedition offered the Kigezi Mountain pygmies what to them was wealth to •enlist their services as hunters for a museum specimen.. They met with a blank refusal. The flesh, moreover, is considered by them as "an abomination.' 3 To suggest eating it is an insult. As regards the pelt, even the professional tanners will not touch, it. They "would as soon consent to flay a brother's skin." We may, I think, dismiss definitely from our minds any suggestion that the few Africans who venture up into the Birunga Mountains are enemies of the gorilla at home, though gorillas of the northern group /have, it is true, been wounded by arrows (and rightly) when engaged outside their forests on rare but ruthless raids on banana groves, on which thereabouts the lives of a human family may depend. DIED OF LUNG DISEASE. In 1919, I had for about a year a two-year-old gorilla and a young elephant which had been abandoned in a forest panic. The former was, I sliould say, more consciously affectionate than a human child of its age. It used to follow me about wherever it could. It cried pitifully when left alone. It was particularly terrified when held up over a height or even very high off the ground. It died of lung trouble during the epidemic of "Spanish" 'flu. This proves nothing, but there is other and better evidence than mine that the gorilla may be near enough to man to catch some of his diseases. In general, my impression has been of a relatively sniaH proportion of adult males to females, and' still less of young to adult females. One old male has usually appeared to dominate the troop. In 1919, on Sabyinyo, there used to be a female gorilla, whom we photographed at close quarters, with a peculiar deformity or mutilation of the foot. She is stated now to run lame and to frequent a small troop on Southwest Bishokc.