Top 10 science stories of 2008 -- #5: a new band of lowland gorillas

December 27, 1:29 PMScience News ExaminerMeg Marquardt

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Credit Wildlife Conservation Society

In celebration of the approaching New Year, I present a list of the top ten science stories of 2008.  Taken from the vast expanse of all fields of science, they may not be everyone's top ten, but they are among the top news makers and will have repercussions well past the ending days of 2008.

In my lifetime, news on animals in danger of extinction has rarely been happy.  In fact, the first story I think of along this vein is the rapidly disappearing honey bees. So I remember distinctly when the story first broke on CNN. I just sat back and smiled. 

In August, it was reported that a band of 125,000 lowland gorillas had been discovered deep in the forests of the Republic of Congo.  That doubles the number of animals that had been thought to still exist in the wild.  I cannot remember another time when such a large copse of an endangered species had been discovered, and for a while, I was simply happy that it had happened.  As such it took a while for me to wonder just how 125,000 gorillas managed to hide for so long.  Gorillas are such large animals, that I couldn't even imagine a band of 100 escaping human detection.

As it turned out, these gorillas had taken up residence in an area of forest that was already protected by the Wildlife Conservation Society. It was a wide area, and the group only decided to perform a survey because of a tip given by hunters that gorillas might be in the region.  During the day, these large animals are reclusive and experts at hiding so only a few were spotted by the researchers.  This meant the scientists had to rely on counting the nests that the gorillas make each night to sleep in to estimate the size of the band.

And even though this is an amazing find, it does not mean that the gorillas have any hope of being taken off the endangered species list in the near future.  On top of hunting and deforestation, the greatest threat to the animals is the Ebola virus that has eliminated other bands of gorillas in the region.  At the moment, scientists do not know how to Ebola is transmitted amongst gorillas and therefore cannot hope to stop the spread of the disease.  

This find is a gift—a second chance.  Hopefully it will give scientists and the rest of society a chance to help protect and save this beautiful creature.

Check out the rest of the list here.