Goodbye Gorilla: Vaccine Urgently Needed

 If the usual threats of poaching and habitat loss weren't enough, gorillas face the added danger of a deadly disease that has been surging through their ranks. The highly-infectious Ebola virus has decimated huge swaths of the already diminished western lowland gorilla population. Scientists are in a race against time to protect these animals from the disease.
Western lowland gorillas are the most common type of gorilla, but there are probably only between 50,000 and 100,000 left in the wild, all of them in the forests of the Congo basin in central Africa. All other types of gorilla, including the cross river gorilla, the mountain gorilla, and the eastern lowland gorilla, total only a few thousand, and are also found in Africa.
Over the past 20 to 25 years, hunting and disease alone have reduced the numbers of western lowland gorilla by 60 percent, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Full article >>