The Gorilla Organization
he Gorilla Organization’s mission is to protect the world’s few remaining gorillas in the wild through a groundbreaking programme of conservation, socio-economic development and environmental education.
With fewer than 790 mountain gorillas and 3,000 eastern lowland gorillas left, these magnificent apes are facing extinction through habitat loss, poaching, war and disease.
Although the Gorilla Organization initially concentrated on traditional conservation methods, such as law enforcement, in the mid 1990s it began to expand its programme toincorporate capacity-building and poverty reduction initiatives in communities alongside the gorilla habitat.
One of the greatest threats to the gorilla population’s survival is habitat destruction, caused largely by the production of charcoal and use of firewood collected from the national parks.
The impoverished towns and villages surrounding the Virunga National Park in eastern DR Congo are densely populated, with the majority of households practicingsubsistence farming and lacking basic amenities, including electricity. Families are therefore reliant on charcoal and firewood, used extensively for cooking and heating.
The Gorilla Organization is implementing a fuel-efficient stoves project alongside a local partner. Fuel-efficient stoves reduce the use of charcoal and firewood by approximately 75%, which in turn diminishes human pressure on the gorilla habitat and the loss of DR Congo’s forest cover.
We gave them £10,000 through our Global Grants Programme towards this fuel-efficient stoves project.
