Virunga Ranger and an Orphaned Mountain Gorilla: The Real Story

A Virunga Ranger and an Orphaned Mountain Gorilla: The Story Behind a Photo

Photo: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images

What the famous photo actually shows

The picture that went viral shows Patrick Karabaranga, a ranger at Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, sitting beside a young orphaned mountain gorilla in the park's sanctuary. The gorilla has placed a hand on the ranger's leg, and he looks down at it calmly. The image was taken by AFP photographer Phil Moore and is distributed by Getty Images.

Social media posts often said the ape had "just" lost its mother to poachers. The photo does not show that, and the timing is not documented. What is well established is that the young gorillas living at Virunga's sanctuary are orphans, most of them because poachers or wildlife traffickers killed or seized their mothers. The scene is better understood as everyday care at a rescue centre than as the moment after a tragedy.

The short clip above circulated together with the photo. Footage like this is one reason Virunga's orphans became some of the most recognisable apes in the world.

Virunga, Africa's oldest national park

Virunga was created in 1925, under Belgian colonial rule, as Albert National Park, and it is usually described as the first national park in Africa. It covers roughly 7,800 square kilometres along the borders with Rwanda and Uganda, taking in active volcanoes, lowland forest, savannah and the snowy Rwenzori mountains. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1979 and has kept it on its List of World Heritage in Danger since 1994, after waves of war and refugee crises hit the region.

Protecting the park has been dangerous work. Armed groups had killed 175 rangers by April 2018, according to figures cited on Wikipedia, and further deadly attacks followed in 2020 and 2021. Since 2010 Virunga has been managed through a partnership between the Congolese wildlife authority (ICCN) and the Virunga Foundation, led by park director Emmanuel de Merode.

Why the park needs a gorilla orphanage

Mountain gorilla infants nurse for around three to four years and stay close to their mothers for much longer. A baby that loses its mother in the wild has almost no chance of surviving on its own. Mothers are sometimes shot by traffickers trying to capture infants for the illegal pet trade, and adults can also be caught in snares set for other animals.

One event shaped the sanctuary more than any other. In July 2007 several mountain gorillas were shot dead in Virunga, among them the silverback Senkwekwe; the killings were linked at the time to people involved in the illegal charcoal trade. The Senkwekwe Center at Rumangabo, named after him, received its first orphans, Ndakasi and Ndeze, in December 2009. The park describes it as the only facility in the world caring for orphaned mountain gorillas.

Mountain gorillas do not do well in captivity, and none live in zoos. That is why orphans are kept in a forested enclosure inside their natural range, cared for by a small team of specialist rangers and vets who act as substitute family.

Ndakasi and the rangers who raised her

The best-known orphan of all was Ndakasi. Rangers found her in 2007 as an infant clinging to the body of her mother, who had been shot. Ranger Andre Bauma took charge of her and remained her main caregiver for around 14 years at the Senkwekwe Center.

Ndakasi became an internet star in 2019, when a selfie taken by ranger Mathieu Shamavu showed her and fellow orphan Ndeze standing upright behind him, mimicking the humans' pose. She died in September 2021 after a long illness, held in Bauma's arms, an ending reported by National Geographic. Her life showed both the cost of poaching and what patient care can achieve.

How mountain gorillas are doing today

There is real good news. Mountain gorillas live in only two places: the Virunga volcanoes shared by the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, and the Bwindi-Sarambwe forest area. Surveys added together and released in December 2019 counted at least 1,063 individuals, up from a few hundred in the 1980s. In 2018 the IUCN moved the subspecies from Critically Endangered to Endangered, a rare upgrade for a great ape.

You will often read that Virunga National Park holds about a quarter of all mountain gorillas. Estimates of the park's share vary with each census and with how the cross-border population is divided, so it is fairer to say the park protects a significant part of the world population rather than a fixed fraction.

The threats have not gone away. Armed conflict in North Kivu has repeatedly disrupted ranger patrols and tourism, human diseases can spread to gorillas because they are so closely related to us, and growing communities around the park need land and fuel. Conservationists credit the recovery largely to constant ranger protection, veterinary care and gorilla tourism that gives local people a stake in keeping the apes alive.

Common myths, and how you can help

Myth: gorillas are aggressive. Mountain gorillas are mostly peaceful plant-eaters living in family groups led by a silverback. Chest-beating and charges are usually bluffs meant to avoid a real fight.

Myth: the photo captures grief moments after a killing. As explained above, nothing documents that. The bond in the picture comes from steady, daily care.

Myth: a pet gorilla is a rescue. Buying a baby ape, even to "save" it, pays the traffickers who killed its family. Report wildlife for sale to local authorities instead.

If you want to help, support established conservation groups that publish their work, choose responsible gorilla tourism that follows park distance and health rules, and avoid sharing viral wildlife posts that invent details. Accurate stories about places like Virunga do more good in the long run.

Sources: Photo by Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images; Virunga National Park: Gorilla Orphans; Berggorilla: Senkwekwe Centre; NBC News (2019): the ranger selfie; Mongabay (December 2019): mountain gorilla census; National Geographic (2021): Remembering Ndakasi; Wikipedia: Virunga National Park; Wikipedia: Mountain gorilla.

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