Study
Extreme Conservation Leads to Recovery of the Virunga Mountain Gorillas
Robbins, Martha M.; Gray, Maryke; Fawcett, Katie A.; Nutter, Felicia B.; Uwingeli, Prosper; Robbins, Andrew M.
PLoS ONE, 2011
Demographic records spanning decades were compared between mountain gorilla groups subject to intensive protection — daily monitoring, anti-poaching patrols and veterinary intervention — and groups without it, to identify what drove the population trajectory.
- Studied in
- Gorilla beringei beringei
- Sample size
- decades of demographic records from habituated and unhabituated groups
Groups under extreme protection grew markedly while unprotected groups did not, with the difference driven chiefly by reduced mortality from snares and disease rather than by increased birth rate. The Virunga population increased over the study period, against the trend for great apes generally.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Intensive, sustained and expensive intervention reversed the decline of a great ape population, and the effect is attributable to specific mortality reductions.
How NatureHQ reads it
Worth citing because conservation content is so often either despairing or vague, and this is neither. It is a measured case of a great ape population recovering, with the mechanism identified: fewer snare injuries and fewer disease deaths, achieved by daily monitoring and veterinary intervention at a cost that is entirely reasonable to describe as extreme. The honest caveat is in the title. This worked for one small population under conditions almost nowhere else can reproduce, and the other gorilla subspecies — including the far more numerous western lowland gorilla, hit hard by Ebola and hunting — are not on this trajectory.
- One population, under conditions that are not generalisable.
- Protected and unprotected groups differ in more than protection, including terrain and observation intensity.
- Census methodology changed over the period, complicating the longest comparisons.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Public Library of SciencePublished in a PLOS journal under CC BY 4.0.
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019788
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-11.