The Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP) is dedicated to saving the lives of mountain gorillas through healthcare. With only about 800 mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) left in the world today, we work to ensure the health and well being of every individual gorilla possible.

Our international team of veterinarians, known as the Gorilla Doctors, is the only group providing wild mountain gorillas with direct, life-saving medical care. With our base in the U.S., we operate in all three countries where mountain gorillas live: Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In addition to providing mountain gorillas with healthcare, the MGVP monitors the health of DRC’s Grauer’s or eastern lowland gorillas and intervenes to help sick individuals when possible. As a nonprofit, we are funded solely through grants and donations.

While critically endangered, mountain gorillas are the only subspecies of non-human great ape growing in number. A 2010 census of the Virunga Volacnoes Massif, the mountain gorilla’s main stronghold, showed a remarkable population increase of 26.3% over the previous 7 years. A 2011 study* of this same population showed that over a 22-year period the number of habituated gorillas—about 70% of the overall population—increased by 4.1% annually while the number of unhabituated gorillas decreased by 0.7% annually. The difference in the growth rates was attributed to the fact that habituated gorillas benefited from “extreme conservation” practices such as veterinary care. In fact, the MGVP’s veterinary program may be responsible for up to 40% of the difference between the growth rates of the two subpopulations. This species has a fighting chance for survival if we continue to work to address conservation challenges.

The MGVP’s gorilla healthcare program includes:

• Monitoring the health of mountain gorilla groups to ensure the early detection of disease and injury.
• Staging medical interventions to dart sick animals with antibiotics or anesthetize and treat gorillas suffering from human-induced or life-threatening trauma.
• Rescuing and providing veterinary care to gorillas orphaned by poachers.
• Documenting and studying health trends to better predict disease outbreaks.
• Conducting post mortem examinations on dead gorillas to learn more about the health problems that contributed to their deaths.
• Preserving tissue and fluid samples to be used by researchers investigating primate health issues.
• Providing healthcare to people and their animals that live near gorilla habitat in order to reduce the risk of inter-species disease transmission.

MGVP's work would not be possible without the collaboration of the wildlife authorities of the countries where mountain gorillas live: the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), L’Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). We also work with a number of other gorilla conservation groups, especially the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) and the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP).

*PLoS One 6(6) e19788