TRACK, WATCH, BEFRIEND

IN THE PRISTINE WILDERNESS OF GABON ARE THE MAJESTIC AND GENTLE WESTERN LOWLAND GORILLAS. A FIRSTHAND REPORT FROM OUR TRAVEL WRITER ON WHAT GOES INTO HABITUATING THEM.

- Ramdas lyer

Sitting still in the forest with my tracker, we were awaiting the arrival of western lowland gorillas on their morning forage. And then, suddenly, as if on cue, they did, slowly but surely. In the thick arrowroot bush undergrowth, I noticed a juvenile western lowland gorilla staring at me through the verdant leaves.

Soon, I was surrounded by juveniles, sub-adults and mothers watching me curiously. A baby gorilla and her sibling came almost 10ft from me at which time we had to hurriedly move away to keep a healthy distance - so as not to expose them to airborne human viruses. That moment still lives in me.

I am recollecting this experience from about a decade ago when visiting the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of the Congo (ROC), also known as Congo food on adjacent swamp lands and savannah grasslands.

They inhabit the countries of Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, the ROC and the Central African Republic (CAR).

During my Odzala trip in 2015, I was completely enamored by these gentle creatures and spent several hours watching them go about their daily lives. Over dinner once with Dr Bermejo, I learned about the difficulties and expenses of habituation, including the dangers of exposing human-borne viruses to these apes.

She said her biggest shock came when over 5,000 gorillas - including the nearly 200 animals her research group was observing - died during an Ebola outbreak in the ROC. She shared with me the research videos, captured using camera traps, of their social behavior.

In my quest to see these gorillas again, I traveled to Gabon in 2018. The country has the largest population of these animals inhabiting the Congo Basin, the world's second-largest rainforest area after the Amazon. This second visit to see habituated gorillas took me to the Loango National Park where scientists from the Max Planck Institute from Leipzig, Germany, had begun their research since 2016.