Baby gorillas set to soon have new play area in Congo

November 21, 2009 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

Baby gorillas orphaned from their mother will receive a new sanctuary in east Congo.

In 2007, park rangers in the Congo’s Virunga National Park found two baby gorillas, their mother slain. One of the two-month-old babies was clinging to the body of its dead mother, and the other was found on the back of its older brother.

Park officials quickly took the babies and moved them to a temporary location in the city of Goma.

“If they had not been taken out of the wild, they would have died,” said Samantha Newport, communication director of the park.

Officials weren’t sure who was responsible for the death of the mothers, but they suspected that illegal loggers were responsible.

The group soon set to work building a new habitat for the baby gorillas, Ndeze and Ndakasi, in July of 2007, but work was cut short when rebels overran the park as part of the civil war that’s raged in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Work continued later that year once hostilities had subsided.

Officials announced yesterday that the 2.5 acre sanctuary, the Senkwekwe Center, located inside the Virunga National Park, would be completed by March.

They said that the interior holding facility for the sanctuary would be roomy, and the center would also include special visitation platforms, an education center, and medical facilities for the animals.

Virunga National Park’s director, Emmanuel de Merode, was pleased with recent progress, stating that the center offers “a unique opportunity to enable the local population to see gorillas, and provides a launch pad for the veterinary activities that are conducted throughout Virunga.”