Gorillas

Alex Re (00:01): Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. This week we'll be taking a look at an animal that's one of our closest relatives. They even act a little bit like us, but we'll get to that later to give us some information about them. I've invited Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka on the podcast. She knows what it's like to interact with these animals in the wild, which is something that very few people have been able to do. So join me as we head over to Africa to talk about gorillas.

(01:02): There are only two gorilla species, the eastern and western gorillas, and the only place that they can be found in the wild is in central Africa. So you can find them in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda, and remember that gorillas are not monkeys, they're apes. Now, even though they're about as tall as an average human, they're much heavier than us. They can be about four to six feet tall, but can weigh in at around 500 pounds. That's a lot of muscle mass. It's thought that a silverback, which is an adult male, is as strong as 20 people combined and can lift around 1800 pounds. Also, adult male gorillas are called silverbacks because around the age of 12, the hair on their back starts to become silver in color. Unfortunately, these amazing animals are decreasing in population and they're labeled as critically endangered by the IUCN Red list.

(02:05): There are some people that are doing great things to help them though. Just like our guest today, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. Dr. Gladys is known as Uganda's first wildlife veterinarian, and she spent her career caring for mountain gorillas and other native wildlife in Africa. She's also the founder of an organization called Conservation through Public Health, which she's going to tell you about herself. And she just came out with a book about her journey called Walking with Gorillas. I'm so excited for you to hear my interview with her as she truly is an amazing person. So the first question I asked her was how she first got interested in working with gorillas.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (02:50): My journey with gorillas has been for quite a long time. I first studied the mountain gorillas in 1994 as a veterinary student, and I first heard about them when I got interested in wildlife and I volunteered at the Wildlife Clubs of Uganda. Somebody, a warden came over and told us that we now have mountain. We've discovered that we have mountain gorillas in Uganda, and I wanted to go and visit them, but he said they're not yet habituated. So I set up the wildlife club in high school following that experience, which was amazing. We took the children to the national park. It was my first time I remembered being in a national park. It was really nice, but I was a bit sad that there was very little wildlife and there were no predators. And so it made me feel that I want to be a vet who works with wildlife.

(03:41): I'd always wanted to be a veterinarian having grown up with lots of pets at home. And in fact, one of the pets, not necessarily my pet, but the pet for the next door neighbor used to coming home. He was a vervet monkey who used to come home and pull the cats and dog tails and steal food in the kitchen. Yeah, very naughty monkey, but I was fascinated at how similar he was to us and his fingers were just like mine. And then later one time I was playing the piano and he watched me playing and I moved away to see what he would do. He sat down and played one note and I was like, whoa, they're so intelligent. And I started to get fascinated by primates. And so think when I heard about the mountain gorillas being in Uganda, that interest could have started from when I was around eight years old.

(04:31): But after setting up the Wildlife club, I got a chance to study in UK at the Royal Bit College University of London, and I was allowed to come home and work on an animal of my choice. So I first worked with chimpanzees in the zoo and then chimpanzees in the wild. Then finally went the gorilla as well, habituated to human presence. I got to go and work with them in windy one year after tourism had begun. And that's when I really got interested in mountain gorillas. I mean, at that point I felt that I wanted to be a vet who works with wildlife because I was concerned that there were very few gorillas remaining. There were only about 650 left in the world, and I was concerned that they're going to become extinct. And so I've never left.

Alex Re (05:17): That's great. And you kind of talk about that in your book Walking With Gorillas. Can you just give me a little bit more of a synopsis about what your book's all about?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (05:26): My book Walking With Gorillas is about my conservation and leadership journey, which has been largely dominated by the gorillas, the mountain gorillas. I mean, I've always loved animals and in my book I talked about all the other animals that I've worked with and got attached to, but the gorillas stand out and how wanting to save the gorillas and stop them going extinct is the reason why I've ended up working with them all these and I've learned so much from them. So the first phase of the book talks about starting my conservation journey, and then the second phase talks about working as a first veterinarian for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. And that was a very exciting job. And then after that I talk about setting up conservation through public health when people made gorilla sick and we lost a baby gorilla and the rest only recovered with treatment.

(06:22): And then the last part of the book talks about sustaining conservation efforts because it's so difficult to sustain conservation other than grant funding and tourism, which I also talk about because it has its positives and negatives. But then I also talk about gorilla conservation coffee where we're supporting farmers so that they don't have to poach and collect firewood, but farmers who live next to the gorillas. And I also talk about the role of women in conservation because the more that you engage women, the more likely you're going to have long-term holistic solutions for conservation. And I also talk a little bit more about one health and why it's important to engage the people from where the wildlife is in order to ensure a secure feature for the wildlife.

Alex Re (07:09): I couldn't agree more with what Dr. Gladys is saying here. When we get the whole community involved, that's when real differences can be made. And one way she's trying to do this is through the organization that she founded called Conservation through Public Health.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (07:26): Conservation through Public Health promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling people to coexist with gorillas and other wildlife through improving the health of the animals, the health of the people and the livelihoods of the communities who share their habitats with the gorillas. And we founded conservation through public health based on experiences I had working as a fast veterinarian for the Uganda Wildlife Authority, one of the first cases I had to deal with within nine months of my employment was a fatal skin disease in the critically endangered mountain gorillas. They told me they were losing hand developing white scaly skin. And I went in there with a drug which treats kbs because before traveling the 10 hour journey to the national park, I spoke to a human doctor friend of mine and I asked her, what is the most common skin disease in people? And she said, it's kbs, which I found strange because I did my veterinary education in the UK where people are relatively, it's the developed world, so people don't get scabies, but they may occasionally get it sarcoptic mange from their pets. That's the other name for scabies. And so I was kind of surprised and she said, yes, because people are poor and they have low income. Groups of people in Uganda have less than adequate hygiene. They don't bake that often, and they're likely to get diseases like scabies. And so I went to the bottle of Ivermectin and I hoped it was scabies because it requires just one treatment, but if it's ringworm, you have to catch them every day and put cream on their bodies, which is almost impossible for a wild animal basically.

(09:05): And so when we got there, we found out that it was scabies. And luckily I was with a vet who had worked with cheetahs in Masai Mara, and he had come to advise us. He had hoped to set up the Kenya Island Lab service vet unit, and he said, cheetahs that were visited by many vehicles were more stressed than those that were not. And so we proved that it was scabies, but it took us some time to prove that it came from humans. And then we started to improve the community health. I realized then that you can't keep the gorillas healthy without improving the health of the communities. And so that's how we started conservation through public health. But even as we started it, I also realized that you can't also keep the habitats of the gorilla secure without also improving the wellbeing and livelihoods of the local communities.

Alex Re (09:51): So not only is she saving gorillas, but Dr. Gladys is working to support the local community

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (09:57): Because we found that many people were unhealthy because they're poor. And as you're checking gorillas going to check on the gorillas, you find that many cross farms, they even tell tourists, this is a coffee farm. And tourists are like, wow, this is interesting. They've only seen coffee in a supermarket or a coffee shop like in America or Europe or somewhere. So that's also part of the trek. But then I was shocked to find that those farmers did not get a good price for their coffee and was still going into the forest to poach. So actually my husband gave me the idea that why don't we start a global coffee brand to save gorillas one sip at a time. And so what we do is we give the farmers an above market price for good coffee. We only buy good coffee from them because that's the only coffee we can sell at a high price.

(10:46): And a donation from every bag sold goes to support the farmers and the work of the organization to improve community health and gorilla health and conservation education. And actually we're very lucky that Wendy's a part where it's a high altitude. We have good soils and we do produce very good Arabica coffee. And so that's made it a lot easier. We even won that's coffee won 92 points and was among the top 30 coffees reviewed by coffee review in California in 2018. Wow. I know. I actually talk about that in the book as well. And we were so excited. We're just entering the coffee industry and that then helped us to increase the price, but also it made us realize that we have to get all the farmers to the same level so that they can all produce very good coffee because ultimately they'll be better off and the gorillas will be better off.

Alex Re (11:39): Absolutely. You guys are doing such amazing work and it's something that you never think about how the impact of human health can have on the health of other wildlife as well. Just something that passes through everybody's mind. I never thought about that before.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (11:59): Yes, it was a big revelation, but we share over 98% genetic material with gorillas and chimpanzees, and that means we can easily make each other sick. And it's much easier for us to go to the doctor than for them to go to the doctor.

Alex Re (12:14): Definitely.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (12:15): It's better not to make them sick.

Alex Re (12:18): Yes, absolutely. And in your experience working with gorillas, what is the dynamic like in a group of gorillas and how do they interact with each other?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (12:30): Gorilla groups are very fascinating. They live like in a harem typically. So in the harem you have the lead dominant silverback with many wives, what people call wives. He's got many females around him with babies, and he does have a few adult males because as they grow up, they become adult males. And that's a typical gorilla group. Sometimes you may have more than one silverback if the younger males mature, but typically you have one dominant silverback who mates, he's the only one who's supposed to mate with the females, and he believes that all those babies are his. And that creates a stable family group. And when two gorilla groups fight, normally they're fighting over females. The males are fighting over females, but it's the female who decides whether she should cross over and join the new male or stay in her group. And that's how most of them are.

(13:21): But there are a few bachelor herds, I mean bachelor groups where you just have bachelor males on their own, but they're always trying to grab females from other groups. And so that's typically how it is. And they groom each other a lot and they play with each other. The babies of the different mothers play together, and it's always a very happy family setting when you go there. But the silver back determines where they should travel and what they should do every day. And he's always there to protect his family. So when you get to a group, you always have to know where he is because you have to be on the right side of him. Yep.

Alex Re (13:59): That's really interesting. And you were talking about this a little bit before, but are there any behaviors that they have that kind of remind you of humans?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (14:09): Yeah, there's lots of behaviors that they have. In the first time that I met the gorillas, I mean, I saw the gorillas that very day. I only saw one gorilla, which is not typical, and he was just not moving with his group that day, and he was a silverback who wasn't the lead silverback of the group. And when I saw him, our eyes deeply connected and I thought, wow, they're so similar to us. There was a deep connection. It was so intelligent. He had very intelligent eyes, brown eyes, very intelligent. And I thought, wow, that's pretty amazing. They recognize us by sight. And one thing that I also saw is that moms are such good mothers to their babies. They carry the baby in the front up to about six months. Then as they get to one year old, they can start carrying them on the back and they have a very close bond to their mothers.

(14:59): And the babies stay with the moms up to four years. And then at four years old, mom has another baby, and the older sibling helps to babysit the younger sibling. So it's very logical. And actually I think gorillas are better than us at birth spacing because that's what human beings are supposed to be doing. You're not supposed to have babies every year because the older one's not yet ready. They still need their mother's attention. And so the way that they do it is the older one helps to babysit the younger one and can now build his own nest and teaches the other one how to play and how to survive. And it's very logical. Both gorillas and chimpanzees have babies. They have that spacing of between four to five years. And for chimps, it can even be longer. So I did learn that from the gorillas and I spaced our boys, my husband and I spaced our boys the four and a half years apart.

(15:50): And I think it's worked. I mean they may have their fights and everything, but the older sibling has always looked after his younger brother very well when we're not around. But also one of the thing that gorillas do, which is really funny, is as much as they're in a herd, sometimes we've seen younger males, younger black backs, not quite as mature, but the black box, which haven't yet silvered sometimes mate with females when the dominant guy is not looking, the other males, the younger males in the group, and then when he comes round, they separate. Nothing has been happening and start eating food or something. And I just thought, well, and then when done genetic studies, we found that he's not always the father in the group. He thinks he is, but he's not always the father in the group. And in a way it's good because there's so few number, they're so quite inbred. So it's good that such things happen, but I just thought, well, that's quite similar to humans as well. Yeah, absolutely. If a man has several wives, then such things typically happen, I would imagine.

Alex Re (17:02): Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like if we can get people to see that gorillas have a lot of these similar qualities that humans have, maybe we can generate more of a caring for them and that could possibly help their conservation.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (17:20): It definitely would. Like the moms breastfeed for three years and then afterwards they conceive and they have very tight bones with their children and yeah, they're very good mothers. They tend to help each other a lot actually. Yeah,

Alex Re (17:35): That's really great. So gorillas are similar to humans in a bunch of different ways, and I think if we can get people to see that maybe there would be more of a push for their conservation. Now we've got a lot more great stuff to talk about. And after our break, Dr. Gladys is going to tell us about some of her favorite experiences working with gorillas. The science word that I want to tell you about today is ectoderm. An ectoderm is an animal that relies on the outside environment in order to regulate their body temperature. So if their body temperature gets too low, they might have to bask in the sun to warm it up. Can you think of an animal that's an ectoderm? If you said any reptile or amphibian like a snake lizard, frog or salamander, then you'd be right. Okay, we're back. Let's hear about some of Dr. Gladys's experiences with gorillas.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (18:54): It started up by being traumatic, and then it became a story which always warms my heart because they told me that the gorillas were, we first saw starting gorilla had recto prolapse. The rec time came out of the backside. This is weird. And then it went back and he said, oh, it happens from time to time. And I said, you have to call me out because this is abnormal. Anything is abnormal, you have to call me out. I said, okay. And I realized they needed training. They've never had any training on monitoring the health of gorillas because it was very rare for, I mean, veterinary medicine in conservation was completely new, and everyone knew that if you saw a sick animal, just natural selection, and it was time for that animal to die and that silver, but to take over the group. So it was always like that.

(19:41): And when I came in, a lot of what I spent, I spent a lot of time explaining why A, that is important in conservation and why animal welfare is important in wildlife conservation. And so then the next time they called me and said, it's come out and it stayed out. So I rushed to the national park and poor, she was a gorilla with around six years old. She was very weak and had to do surgery on her, but before I could do surgery on her, when they told me it had come out, people were telling me that don't intervene because promoting bad genes in already, you may be promoting bad genes in an already endangered population, whereas other people, the warden was like, you've got to intervene. Everybody, no one wants to look at s scilla suffering, and the tourists asked me to call you.

(20:28): Everybody's very concerned about the scilla. And so I just decided because we are not even sure whether it's human related or not was bad genes or not, I'm going to intervene from a welfare perspective. So I intervened and was able to treat her amputate, the rotten part, stitch back the rest. She recovered and went on to have six babies. And when she recovered from the operation, everybody was very excited. Even those who had said, we shouldn't intervene. And so that really warmed my heart. And she used to babysit her younger brother, so she was given a name called Khara, which means a nice girl who likes to babysit the obedient, the nice obedient girl. And she continued to do that. She went back to playing with her younger brother, and that was a very heartwarming story. But I know there've been lots of heartwarming stories, but also the gorillas are, there've been times when mother gorilla leaves a group and the father gorilla looks after the baby or the mother dies, and the father gorilla actually looks after the baby when they're still an infant until he grows up, which is quite amazing if he's an older infant.

(21:37): So that's another human-like quality go Gorilla is a very, the fathers have a relationship with their children. It's not only the mothers. You see what I mean? Yeah. So the fathers actually care about their children within their family, which is also very, absolutely. Yeah. So those kind of stories are very heartwarming. But another one I think I'll talk about is when the father of Khara got very old, he was afraid fast gorilla to be habituated for tourism, his group. And so when he started to get very old, the government, the one Uganda Wildlife Authority asked him to check on him and possibly translocate him back into the park. And so I went there with our team, and then I saw that he was really well settled in community land, and I felt that if you translocate him into the park, he's going to come back out again.

(22:30): The reason he wasn't with his group is he couldn't keep up with him anymore. He was growing very old, and they move about a kilometer a day or even longer. They move at least a kilometer a day. And so we thought, we educated the communities through our village health and conservation teams, who we work closely with in the community health and conservation program, and educated them to tell their communities that it's okay to less tolerate him because he may take occasion on banana plant or something, but it's because of him. We have tourism and people are being lifted out of poverty. So they did, and they looked after him. They said, even when our elders get old, we look after them. And so they did. And when he died and he was buried next to the park office, everybody came to pay their last respects, the community members. And that helped me to realize how far gorillas were now coexisting with people. And this was about 19 years after tourism had begun. So it was a really heartwarming story. And just last year we put up a grave tombstone to remember Rza, and it turned out that he had seen 50,000 visitors, more than 50,000 visitors in his lifetime. Could you imagine? That is crazy. How many people see that? Many people in their lifetime, people coming to visit you, 50,000 people. So he tolerated, he put up with quite a lot.

Alex Re (23:54): Yeah, I can imagine.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (23:56): And all of them are most of them, the time that people are different must have been. Oh God, yeah.

Alex Re (24:04): Yeah. And could you talk a little bit about why gorillas are important to the ecosystems that they're a part of?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (24:13): Yeah. Gorillas are very important to the ecosystems because they eat a lot of leaves, shoots and stems and fruits as well, a little bit of fruit. And when they swallow all this food and it comes out in their digestive system, they're able to disperse seeds in the forest. And in that way, they're able to keep the forest going. So they're kind of gardeners in the forest, and as they move around and they defecate, then they keep leaving more seeds. And that's very important for the ecosystem. And also when you're protecting gorillas, which are like a charismatic species, you end up protecting all the other species in the habitats, but you also protect that forest, that same forest which they're living in, and they're helping to keep going and propagate. You protect that forest. And when you protect that forest, it's a very important water catchment area for the forest to remain and for the people who depend on the streams that come from the forest or clean drinking water. And also at the same time, it modulates the climate in the area. And so by having a species like a gorilla, which eats a lot, defecates, keeps the forest going. And at the same time, because it's so charismatic, people, let's pay lots of money to visit the gorillas, you're able to keep forests intact. And that's very important. Once you lose the forests, then it's very bad for everyone.

Alex Re (25:38): Yeah, definitely. And it's kind of like a domino effect. You're saving one species and it helps all these other species, including us.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (25:47): Yes, including us. And that's something else we say to the community. Gorillas are not only important because trees pay money to come and see them, and you get to share, but they're important for the water and maintaining the forest, the water, and there's so many other things that they're important for. And so I think people realize that as well.

Alex Re (26:07): Yeah, definitely. And so what are some of the problems that gorillas are facing today?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (26:13): Well, quite the main problems, actually the biggest problem is habitat loss. Because where most gorillas are found and the amount of gorillas we're working windy, and there's a very high human population density of around 300 people per square kilometer. And that means that the forest habitat, people kept on cutting trees when it became, it turned from a forest reserve to National Park. People are not allowed to cut trees anymore. But gorillas come out because once they lose their fear of people, they go back and range where they used to range before gorilla tourism began. I mean, before people cut up their forest habitat, they'll go back there. And so habitat loss is a big issue everywhere where gorillas are found in Africa, apart from many one or two countries like Gabon, which is not so heavily populated, but in the 10 countries in Africa where gorillas are found, habitat loss is a big issue.

(27:12): Then once you habituate them and make them used to people so that you can generate revenue for tourism and research and monitor them more closely, then disease becomes an issue because we're so closely related to them and can make each other sick. So disease then becomes the biggest threat to habituated gorillas. So habitat loss is the biggest threat to gorillas overall, but disease is the biggest threats to gorillas that habituated for tourism or research. And then poaching is another threat because once you habituate gorillas, they don't know the difference between someone who's good and someone who's bad. So when people approach them, it's easy to approach them. And occasionally they've been poached or killed by poachers in the forest. And this actually, it's happened a couple of times a number of times, and the poachers in Uganda and Rwanda, people don't eat gorillas. So when people come into the forest to poach, they're poaching other animals in the habitat like the bush pigs and the Dai car, which they eat, but they've come across gorillas and who have to protect their territory and their groups and speared gorillas repeatedly.

(28:23): Let's say they're getting in a fight with their hunting dog, or they get in a fight with a poacher because they're protecting their families. And this same thing happened during Covid. Sadly, he lost a lead super back of group. He was protecting his family, and poaching went up because tourism had gone down and people were hungry because they weren't getting money from tourism. So poaching is an issue for them because now when they lose the fear of people, it's easier to poach them. Another part of the Africa people eat gorillas because they believe that if you eat a gorilla, you can become as strong as a gorilla. And it's a cultural belief. And so in those other parts, bush meat trade is a big thing. People trade bush. They basically kill gorillas for food, and they try and sell the babies because they're too small to eat. So those are all the different threats that face the gorillas. But the biggest ones where I'm working right now is habitat loss and disease and poaching of other animals in their habitat, which eventually affects the gorillas because they put out snares as well. Gorillas sometimes get caught in snares set for other species,

Alex Re (29:29): So they're facing a lot of issues. So what do you think is one of the most important steps in saving gorillas from extinction?

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (29:42): I would say one of the most important steps in saving gorillas from extinction is engaging the human communities who live next to them, because they are the ones who are most likely to drive the gorillas to extinction, and yet they're also the most likely to benefit from the gorillas being around. And so when you engage them effectively, one through conservation education, two, through making sure that they benefit from living next to gorillas, they're part of the tourism industry. When the windy min chip national Park, other parks in Uganda were created, especially where the gorillas and the chimpanzees are, they hired people from the local community to become rangers. And so some of them were former poachers and they now became rangers. They were earning more protecting the animals rather than killing them. Ands also provided money for their families. And so their families started to love these animals because their livelihoods were changing, and that makes a big difference.

(30:41): But then also some revenue from tourism shared with the local communities, and people are allowed to sell crafts to the tourists. They're allowed to sell food and accommodation and community walks. We also take them on coffee safari to meet the coffee farmers. So it's very, very important to engage the community. But one area that our N G O conservation through public health really contributed to was improving the health of the communities where gorillas range, because once you improve the community health, then they're less likely to get sick from human diseases when they leave the park, because now they've lost a fear of people, but also people feel that you care about them. You're not only concerned about animals and the forest, but you also care about them because healthcare is a basic human. And so we found that as we improve community health and the health of their animals, their dogs, cots and their cows and goats, their livestock, then we make them feel that we care about them, and they're more likely to, we've shown that they're more supportive of conservation efforts because we are also concerned about their welfare, not only the welfare of the wildlife.

Alex Re (31:53): Absolutely. Yeah. It all comes back to education and making sure the community is well in touch with the wildlife.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (32:03): Yes. And also I feel like even people in America, what people could do in America to help gorillas is one, you could come and visit them if you're able to, because that makes a big difference. The money that you pay helps you sustain them. But you could also come and volunteer with our nonprofit conservation through public health. Come and do research with us if you're in a university or if you're a student, you can also, when you come to volunteer, we work with school children, we work with adults. There's so many different things we do could help us with monitoring their health in the forest. And while you're in America, you could buy a bag of Gorilla Conservation Coffee, which is being sold in America as well, and knowing that whenever you buy a bag, you're keeping a farmer out of the forest. We go inside the forest to po just collect firewood. But you can also follow us on social media and visit our websites and also buy the book Working with Gorillas where you learn more about our work and look at various ways that you could support our work.

Alex Re (33:08): Yes, definitely. And I know all of you out there, everybody drinks coffee, go buy that Gorilla Conservation Coffee could really make a difference and get that book too. Okay, great. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Dr. Gladys.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (33:21): Thank you so much. And we look forward to hosting in Uganda one day. Yeah,

Alex Re (33:25): That would be amazing.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (33:26): Alexander, have you ever been to Uganda? To Africa?

Alex Re (33:31): No, I've never been to Africa, but I would love to go. Yeah.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (33:35): Yes. That would be fantastic. Yeah, I would love to host you. That would

Alex Re (33:39): Be great. Dr. Gladys has done such amazing things, and I'm so glad she was able to come on to talk to us about Gorilla Conservation Gorillas are in desperate need of our help, so if you want to help them go check out her organization, conservation through Public Health, you can also take a look at the International Gorilla Conservation Program and the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me. As we explored the world of Gorillas, you can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference@onwildlife.org. You can also email us with any questions at On Wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, and you could follow us on Instagram at On Wildlife, or on TikTok at Wildlife. Don't forget to tune in next month for another awesome episode, and that's on Wildlife

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