Mountain gorillas have generated some of the most compelling wildlife news stories of the past three decades. From conservation crises to extraordinary recoveries, from individual gorilla stories that captured global attention to political conflicts that threatened entire populations, the history of mountain gorillas since the 1990s is a narrative rich enough to sustain a book. For gorilla trekking visitors, these stories provide context for what they are witnessing — not a stable, unchanging wildlife sanctuary, but a dynamic, sometimes precarious conservation effort in which specific individuals, specific events, and specific human decisions have repeatedly shifted the trajectory of an entire subspecies.
The habituation of Bwindi’s first trekking groups (1991–1993)
When Uganda Wildlife Authority gazetted Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in 1991, gorilla habituation for tourism had already been practised in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park since the late 1970s. Applying the model to Bwindi required adapting methods developed in the Virunga volcanic forest to Bwindi’s very different ecology — denser vegetation, more complex terrain, a different forest structure. The habituation teams that began work with the Mubare group in 1991 were pioneering an approach to conservation-tourism that would eventually make Bwindi the most important single site for mountain gorilla viewing anywhere in the world.
The Mubare group, habituated between 1991 and 1993, became the first to receive tourist visitors in Bwindi when trekking permits were formally introduced. The fact that gorilla trekking is now a mainstream, well-understood safari experience owes something to the specific individuals — both human and gorilla — who made those early encounters possible. The silverback who led the Mubare group through its early habituation years, and the rangers who spent years in the forest building the trust that made tourism viable, are as much a part of gorilla trekking history as any high-profile conservation campaign.
The DRC conflict and Virunga’s gorillas (1990s–present)
The genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and the subsequent conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo that followed, created a security crisis for the mountain gorilla populations of the Virunga Volcano chain — whose range spans Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC. Virunga National Park in the DRC, the world’s oldest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, became a war zone through which multiple armed groups moved. Park rangers were killed, some gorilla groups were displaced from their habitual ranges by military activity, and conservation operations were severely disrupted for extended periods.
The story of Virunga’s rangers during this period is one of the most remarkable in conservation history. Hundreds of rangers have been killed in Virunga National Park over the past three decades — the park has lost more conservation staff to violence than any other protected area in the world. Despite this, the gorilla population in the Virungas has continued to grow, a testament to the commitment of the remaining rangers and the support of international conservation organisations that maintained a presence through the most difficult periods.
The Rugendo family massacre (2007)
In July 2007, a series of killings in Virunga National Park attracted global media attention in a way that gorilla conservation rarely achieves. Nine mountain gorillas from the Rugendo habituated group were found shot dead over a period of weeks — including a dominant silverback named Senkwekwe, an adult female named Safari, and four younger gorillas. The killings were deliberate — all of the gorillas had been shot execution-style — and appeared to be connected to the illegal charcoal trade that armed groups were conducting through the park.
The Rugendo killings generated an outpouring of international response — front-page news coverage, public outcry, increased donations to gorilla conservation organisations. The images of rangers carrying the bodies of the murdered gorillas became one of the most widely shared wildlife conservation photographs of the decade. The killings ultimately strengthened rather than weakened the conservation response: the public attention they attracted led to increased international pressure on the DRC government, increased funding for ranger support, and renewed political commitment to Virunga’s protection.
The 2010 census: crossing 800
In November 2010, the results of the most recent comprehensive mountain gorilla census were announced: the population had reached approximately 786 individuals — up from approximately 720 in the 2003 census and dramatically higher than the approximately 320 individuals recorded in the 1989 survey that first quantified the population’s dire state. The 2010 figure was widely reported as a conservation milestone, and the coverage it received helped to consolidate public understanding of gorilla conservation as a genuinely successful programme rather than simply an ongoing crisis.
A further update in 2018 confirmed that the population had exceeded 1,000 individuals — the first great ape subspecies to move from declining to increasing status in recent decades. This figure was announced by Uganda Wildlife Authority, the Rwanda Development Board, and the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) jointly, reflecting the transboundary nature of mountain gorilla conservation and the cooperative framework that the three range countries have developed.
Covid-19 and the gorilla permit suspension (2020)
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented challenge for gorilla conservation in 2020. In March 2020, Uganda Wildlife Authority suspended all gorilla trekking permits as a precautionary measure to protect the habituated gorilla groups from potential respiratory virus transmission. The suspension removed the tourism revenue that forms a critical component of the conservation funding model — ranger salaries, anti-poaching operations, and community revenue sharing were all dependent on permit income that had gone to zero overnight.
International conservation organisations stepped in with emergency funding to maintain ranger operations and community support programmes during the suspension period. The commitment of these organisations — and the Ugandan government’s willingness to prioritise ranger continuity over short-term revenue pressures — ensured that the protection infrastructure did not collapse during the tourism drought. When permits were gradually reintroduced in late 2020, the gorilla groups were found to be healthy and the habituation had not been significantly disrupted by the absence of visitors.
The pandemic’s impact on gorilla conservation raised important questions about the resilience of a conservation model so dependent on international tourism revenue. The questions have not all been answered, but the experience demonstrated both the vulnerability of the model and the breadth of international support that exists for mountain gorilla conservation when the moment of crisis requires it.
Individual gorilla stories that made news
Several individual gorillas have generated news stories that transcended specialist conservation reporting. Ndakasi — a female gorilla rescued from the DRC as an infant after her family was killed and raised at the Senkwekwe Centre for orphaned gorillas in Virunga — became internationally known through a photograph that went viral in 2019 showing her posed upright with a smiling ranger as a selfie. Ndakasi died in 2022 in the arms of the ranger who had cared for her from infancy, generating widespread coverage of both her life story and the broader human-gorilla relationships that characterise conservation work in the field.
The story of Titus — a male gorilla in the Virunga Volcanoes who survived the violent death of his father as an infant, was raised largely by silverbacks with no blood relation to him, and went on to become a dominant silverback himself whose group was the subject of extended research — became a flagship example of gorilla resilience and social complexity. David Attenborough’s Gorillas Revisited and various BBC and National Geographic productions have used Titus’s story as a narrative through-line connecting decades of mountain gorilla research and the species’ remarkable recovery.
These individual stories do not merely serve as media content. They function as the human-interest layer of conservation communication — the emotional bridge through which public attention and public support for gorilla conservation are maintained across the decades of sustained effort that recovery requires. Every visitor who treks to Bwindi and returns home with stories of the specific gorillas they encountered, the specific guide who led them, the specific forest morning they will not forget, is adding a personal story to the long collective narrative that keeps mountain gorilla conservation alive in public consciousness.
