A conservation group has said that lightning strike has apparently killed four endangered mountain gorillas in Uganda national park among those including three adult females. An autopsy has been done on the four including a male infant that died on February 3 in Mgahinga National Park in southwest Uganda.
On Saturday, the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC) said in a declaration that according to the whole damage from the autops, the unconfirmed cause of death for all the four individuals is probably to be electrocution by lightning however the laboratory verification will take 2 to 3 weeks.
In August last year, a group of 17 members known as the Hirwa family crossed into Mgahinga National Park from Volcanoes National Park in neighbouring Rwanda and the four gorillas that were killed were among this group. Andrew Seguya the GVTC executive secretary told BBC that this was so miserable because the capability of the three females for their contribution to the population was huge.
The other 13 members of the group had been found.
Only 680 were roughly calculated to be left of the great apes in 2008 however gratitude goes to conservation efforts and anti-poaching patrols because their population has increased to more than 1000.
Due to these efforts, in 2018 the mountain gorilla, a subspecies of the eastern gorilla, was moved from “critically endangered” to “endangered” on the IUCN’s “Red List” of threatened species.
Mgahinga National Park is situated within Virunga massif which is a group of 8 volcanoes that stretch across the three countries of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. This implies that Mgahinga National Park and Volcanoes National Park share the same region. The massif is one of the most important conservation sites in the world and one of only two places where mountain gorillas are found.
