Next to chimpanzees, gorillas are the closest living human relatives. Yet, humans have loved, sold, killed, even eaten gorillas. Dian Fossey's popularization of her field work with mountain gorillas in the 1970s "created this global constituency" of support for gorilla research, according to Bill Weber, director of North American programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Bronx, NY.
There are two species of gorillas, each containing two subspecies. Gorilla beringe includes the eastern lowland gorillas (also called Grauer's gorillas) found in the eastern Congo and the mountain gorillas found in the area of the Virunga volcanoes, which are on Congo's and Uganda's border with Rwanda. Gorilla gorilla includes the western lowland gorillas of west-central Africa and the Cross River gorillas.
Thirty years after Fossey--and WCS's George Schaller before her--began studying gorillas, research on the animals continues, although now, Weber says, the emphasis has changed. "There is much more gorilla conservation ...
