Illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not only notorious inciting gross human rights abuses, but also the rare animal subspecies, the Grauer gorillas, which has dropped from 17,000 species in 1998 to fewer than 3,800 now. This is according to sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Flora and Fauna International and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, on the Status of the Grauer Chimpanzees and Gorillas.
In a statement Jefferson Hall, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and co-author of the report, observes: “The crash in the gorilla population is a consequence of the human tragedy that has played out in eastern DRC.”
The team found evidence of bush meat hunting at nearly every mine site they surveyed, Hall reveals.
