Virunga welcomes another newborn mountain gorilla

In Virunga National Park, the good news just keeps coming. In late February, rangers discovered the 8th newborn mountain gorilla in less than two months.

The latest in a series of births amongst Virunga’s mountain gorillas occurred in the Lulengo family. The mother, Bavanyuma, gave birth to a boy and both are doing marvelously well. Bavanyuma’s other offspring are an adult female named Bagambe and a juvenile named Kighana. Bagambe currently lives with the Rugendo group, which is the result of a past interaction between the two families. The Lulengo family now stands at 10 members.

Although the latest spate of births leads one to believe that mountain gorilla births happen all the time, they typically occur far less frequently. In this family, Maganya was the last to give birth and that occurred in July 2017. Prior to that, one has to go all the way back to 2014 to find a birth in the Lulengo family.