Gorillas - Distribution and Subspecies

Today, the distribution areas of the western and the eastern gorillas are separated by almost 900 km. The reason for this is probably that a formerly uniform area was split at some point, most likely during the ice ages. At that time, climatic changes caused the rain forest to shrink into a few refuge areas. The savannah, which spread between these refuge areas, was not an appropriate habitat for gorillas. Later, when the rain forest spread again over the whole of the African tropics, gorillas could only advance to the Ubangi and Congo Rivers.
As western and eastern gorillas have been separated for such a long time, they have followed separate development paths. Today, they differ distinctly both in their external characteristics and in their genetic material.
Possibly 82,000 gorillas are still living in the western area, according to estimates, and in the eastern region there may be only about 6,000 individuals left. The eastern gorillas are extremely endangered, which is why the Berggorilla & Regenwald Direkthilfe supports the conservation of these populations in particular.

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