Three female mountain gorillas and a male silverback were found shot dead this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park.
But park rangers received some good news yesterday when the five-month-old baby of one of the dead females was found alive.
The baby gorilla, named Ndeze, was badly dehydrated but otherwise fine, the rangers reported.
She was taken to the nearby city of Goma, where the young ape will be looked after at the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.
Ndeze received widespread international attention in February when its mother, called Safari, gave birth—a rare occurrence among the troubled mountain gorillas.
Safari was among the three females found dead, but the baby's older brother rescued her from the mother's body after the attack, rangers say.
The siblings had been seen fleetingly in the dense forest, but rangers had expected that the baby would die from dehydration because the brother could not feed her.
When they found the pair, rangers say, Ndeze's brother was reportedly calm as they took her away.
Paulin Ngobobo, the head ranger of the southern sector of Virunga National Park, called the baby's rescue "an amazing piece of news."
"We had given up hope on Ndeze," he said.
Silverback Shot
The four adult gorillas were shot to death by unknown assailants on Sunday night.
The slaughter deeply shocked the rangers and conservationists who work to protect the endangered gorillas in a park that has been ravaged by civil strife for years.
"This is a disaster," said Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect, a conservation group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya that supports the rangers working in Virunga.
Park staff and WildlifeDirect officials stationed in Virunga's Bukima camp said they heard gunshots coming from inside the dense forest around 8 p.m. on Sunday.
When the rangers ventured into the forest on Monday morning, they found the three female gorillas.
"The gorillas were all quite close together. They had all been shot," de Merode said.
In addition to Safari, another dead female was the mother of a two-year-old. The third gorilla killed was pregnant.
It was not until the following day that rangers found the silverback Senkekwe, the leader of the so-called Rugendo family of 12 individuals.
Another two gorillas from the family are reportedly missing, their fate unknown
More than half of the gorillas' population, estimated at about 700, is found in Virunga. The rest live in forests in Rwanda and Uganda.
The park lies in the heart of one of the most troubled regions of Africa.
Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/index.html
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