Counting the Gorillas

Conservation

Counting the Gorillas

A morning in Bwindi with the rangers who know every silverback in the impenetrable forest by name.

Patrick O., Field Editor · 9 October 2025

Mubare. Habinyanja. Rushegura. The names are not poetic. They are clinical. They are how the rangers keep track of who is alive, who is pregnant, who has wandered into a neighbouring group's territory and started something that may take weeks to resolve.

Sarah has been a ranger for nineteen years. She knew Kanyonyi as a juvenile and watched him become a silverback. She was there the morning he was found, badly hurt, after a fight none of the rangers witnessed. She does not romanticise the forest. She protects it.

Every IMAGINE permit we secure pays, directly, traceably, for a portion of Sarah's salary, a portion of her colleague's boots, and a portion of the children's school fees in the village that ringfences the park. The traveller is part of the count.

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