Lulingu, a Grauer’s gorilla who was reintroduced to Virunga National Park in eastern Congo, is raising a baby after a successful birth, bringing excitement for the conservationists working there.
“The baby and the mother are doing perfectly well,” said Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke, country director at the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center, a 40-acre wildlife sanctuary. “It really makes us happy. We are proud of her. It is also a bit of our success. Imagine, we knew her as a baby, we watched her grow, be rehabilitated, and now she is a mother.”
Lulingu arrived at the sanctuary in 2016 when she was 18 months old. She was rescued from a wildlife trafficking network by the Congolese Wildlife Authority and the nongovernmental organization Gorilla Doctors. The sanctuary gave her space to socialize and play in a setting close to her natural habitat under the watchful eyes of adoptive gorilla mothers. Lulingu was later reintroduced into the wild near Mt. Tshiaberimu, a remote part of Virunga National Park.
“The purpose of our sanctuary is to take in rescued gorillas, but also to care for them until they can be released into the wild. The fact that Lulingu has had a baby is a sign that she has adapted well to life in the wild,” Kabuyaya Mbeke said. “By reintroducing them into the wild, we also hope to repopulate forests that have been stripped of their wildlife.”
The Grauer’s gorilla, also known as the eastern lowland gorilla, is endemic to the tropical forests in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the largest primate on Earth, but its habitat is shrinking under the pressures of armed conflict, deforestation and mining. In 2016, it was reclassified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List after decades of being classified as endangered. Conservationists estimate that 77% of the population has disappeared since 1994, falling from an estimated 16,900 to 3,800 individuals by 2015. That means every birth is important for the species.
“Thanks to this success, we are now looking at whether we will reintroduce more gorillas into the wild. We are in the preparatory phase,” Kabuyaya Mbeke said.
However, security concerns still exist. Virunga National Park has faced decades of violence since the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. That has included clashes among Congolese armed forces, militias and local self-defense groups known as the Wazalendo. Since early 2025, the March 23 Movement, a rebel group, has seized control of large parts of the park, fueling poaching, deforestation and trafficking.
Toto writes for Mongabay, an independent news organization focused on nature.
