Comepletely stop Poaching of gorillas

In Central Africa, the last populations of mountain gorillas are threatened by a new outbreak of poaching.

"We've not see anything like this in the last 20 years," said gorilla researcher Amy Vedder of the Wildlife Conservation Society, based at the Bronx Zoo in New York.

Vedder has spent her life studying mountain gorillas and has played a major role in the campaign to save them. Despite prolonged and often bloody civil unrest in the region But poachers could still twist the conservation success story into tragedy. "The world's total of all mountain gorillas is approximately 660 animals. It can't afford this kind of loss," Vedder said.

In the first two decades after their discovery, European and American scientists and trophy hunters killed over 50 mountain gorillas. To this day, poaching continues to jeopardize the gorillas' survival. Poaching of mountain gorillas for food is extremely rare. It is now largely the result of unselective hunting with snares, which are set to catch antelope, bush pigs and other wildlife but occasionally kill or injure gorillas.

In the '60s and '70s gorillas were poached for sale to foreigners as trophies and captive specimens. None survived in captivity. Recent events have shown that hunting of mountain gorillas in order to capture babies 'commissioned' by unscrupulous dealers remains a very real threat.

In 2002 in Rwanda, two adult females in Susa Group were killed and one baby stolen. A second infant, Ubuzima, was found next to its dead mother.