Can We Save The Mountain Gorilla?

Deep in the forests of Central Africa, a group of wildlife vets— including Canadian Emily Denstedt— is working to bring the great apes back from the brink of extinction.

- Marcello Di Cintio

ON AN EARLY JANUARY MORNING in 2018, Emily Denstedt and her fellow Gorilla Doctors trekked single file into the thick fern and vines of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. They were searching for Buzinza, the matriarch of the Rushegura mountain-gorilla group, because they feared she had broken her arm.

Mountain gorillas tend to move around a lot, so it’s not always easy to find them, and this was the team’s second day on Buzinza’s trail. The doctors had spent all of the previous morning and afternoon tracking the gorilla’s family, only to have Buzinza scamper into a treetop when they finally spotted her. She stayed there until nightfall—too late and too dark for an intervention.

The team was luckier the next day, however. They had to push through the forest for only a few minutes before coming upon Buzinza and the rest of her family—nearly 20 gorillas in all— gathered in a small clearing. She was on the ground eating leaves while her three-year-old clung to her back.

Denstedt was nervous approaching the gorillas. She always is. “You just have to cross your fingers that it’s going to go well, but be prepared for the unknown,” she says. “I always hope I can do a good job and not let my team down.”

Gorilla Doctors is an international group of about 25 wildlife veterinarians, biologists and support staff dedicated to keeping the world’s 1,000 mountain gorillas from going extinct. The NGO serves the health needs of the animals living in this forest, as well as those inhabiting the nearby Virunga Massif: three contiguous national parks spanning the borderlands of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.