The Doctors Treating Endangered Mountain Gorillas | Our World

for centuries these central african jungles have been slow to reveal their secrets concealing mystery animals known only to local people mountain gorillas are a unique subspecies of the gorilla genus living at high elevation their thick fur protects them against cool temperatures and the steady rain that falls onto the mountain slopes guerrilla troops usually contain one mature male the silverback who can weigh 220 kilograms and stands six feet or close to two meters high he protects the females and young from predators and other males seeking his mates protective charges by silverbacks can be frightening and potentially dangerous but the work of researcher diane fossey in the 1970s allowed us to more fully understand these complex social primates ever since their sensational discovery in the mid-1800s guerrillas have been portrayed as savage and ferocious beasts culminating in the film king kong and the persecution continued unabated as we hunted them for trophies and we kidnapped them for the pet trade and for zoos and now in the jungles of central africa little more than 800 mountain gorillas cling to survival in what remains of their habitat but some people are trying to make a difference and i've come to uganda to join the guerrilla doctors a team of veterinarians dedicated to securing the future of this most magnificent of animals the mountain gorilla i start my journey down the rural roads leading from uganda's capital kampala heading west towards the rwandan border to the rainforest that is the domain of the mountain gorilla i'm on my way to the brilliantly named buindi impenetrable national park in uganda one of my favorite things about driving through all of these villages is that i'm constantly smiling everywhere you go someone wants to say hello the warm is welcome anywhere on earth then i spot something bright green moving across the road this is amazing come on little guy i've probably made it quite clear that i'm a fan of reptiles in general and it's impossible not to love chameleons this is a johnston's or three-horned chameleon unique to africa you see it's relaxed at the moment he's just staying nice and green when they get angry they change color they go a much darker color to express their displeasure but i'm just being a part of his environment i'm not grabbing him i'm simply letting him walk on me so he's feeling pretty casual fantastic we'll let him go and off he goes what a color absolutely wonderful color the reason they do that rocking motion is this camouflage so it looks more like a leaf or a branch just rocking much less likely to be seen by a predator the road travels through farming areas rich with volcanic soil as magnificent as this land is i'm reminded that the spread of people and agriculture is also impacting the gorillas [Music] one of the biggest problems facing the mountain gorillas in the two places where they still survive is the fact that the national parks where they remain are essentially islands of forest surrounded by people and agriculture nowhere is this more stark than right here if you look behind me you can see the line of forest as it extends from down there going up the mountain and over the top on that side is forests and gorillas and on this side it's just agriculture and many many people i've got several more hours to go on this very mountainous jungle road [Music] meeting oncoming traffic here is always a challenge hello the land is surrounded by tea plantations an industry started by the british in the early 20th century they called uganda the pearl of africa i meet up with dr jan ramer and the other guerrilla doctors at the inn where diane fossey stayed during her escape from a war in the congo in the 1960s joining dr rama is communications officer jessica burbridge and regional vet fred nazi yamana so in 1985 right before diane fosse died she was seeing gorillas you know dying in snares and from human induced trauma and she said there needs to be a veterinarian there just a couple of months after in 1986 the first gorilla doctor came over his name was jim foster and he set up a little clinic and since then you know it's been almost 30 years and it's grown into an international team of vets there's 14 vets that are working in the three countries it's the greatest thing it's the greatest thing ever i mean that's why we're here is to help these animals and when we can do an intervention and save a life it's the greatest feeling it really is after my veterinary school i always felt i needed to do something positive towards gorilla conservation first up is a health check on a guerrilla troop several hours away in russia where people have been living side by side with gorillas for decades so they'll go and find another group and they'll raid and they'll capture a female today i'm trekking with local guide david and dr fred it's a climb of more than 1 000 meters through communal farmland and into the domain of the russiaga gorilla group to locate them we must depend on up-to-date information provided by an advanced group of trackers so when we get to the top of the hill that the trackers will be able to hear us much better [Music] yeah i didn't quite understand all of that i have just talked with the truckers we have always got truck as they go very early in the morning to locate these animals from the point where we left them the day before and how they're getting on but as i talked with them now they said they're still following yesterday's trucks and they are getting close to where they expect them to have nested okay yes so then from there we'll find out what direction they've gone today yes it's sensational we leave the last of the farmland behind and head towards the deep jungle this jungle is one of the most spectacular i've ever seen and i've spent a long time in the jungles of central and south america and southeast asia and australasia and yet i can say that nothing surpasses this then right at the border of the national park a group of gold miners eek out in existence do they have an amalgam like mercury or is it all just just panned no i think it's mercury would be a bad thing while this is small scale other oil and mining projects are threatening the delicate rainforest ecosystems of central africa it's been a pretty amazing walk-in so far they're not called mountain gorillas without reason we've been climbing and descending climbing and descending and traversing across incredibly steep terrain which is the last places where these gorillas survive really anywhere in the lower lands are just filled with agricultural people and of course where people and animals coexist animals tend to lose out that's what david was just saying that we were gonna have to climb that hill because that's where the gorillas were this morning but the trackers have reported that they're starting to come down the hill towards this valley this salad bowl it's filled with amazing food for them briefly the point where we are is going to be our preparation point in case of anything like charging running is not the best option you are all advisable to stay and feel submissive so you are divisible to stay still early explorers did not heed this warning and were terrified when silverbacks defending their troops charged them even bending rifle barrels in half adding to the monster myth finally the guerrillas have been located in dense vegetation on a very steep slope i'm 2000 meters up a mountainside in uganda and we've just reached a group of gorillas that need to be inspected for illness or injuries by the guerrilla doctors that one's that one's nearly 60 feet in the canopy indicates it's got to be well it's got to be in a healthy state yes it is uh we can't even appreciate it from a distance you look at the size of the stomach yeah it's distended yes the movement of the memes so we have one just here as well and again first thing you notice is the bloated nature of the belly gorillas being obligated herbivores have to eat just a vast amount of food every day up to 20 kilos and there's a lot of fermentation going on inside there hence there's often a little sound in the background a little trump with all the females around we know the big silverback must be nearby the sufferback is there and he's absolutely enormous this one is known for being a very successful predator on other groups so he will raid other groups and steal their females but he'll raid by himself even if the other group has three males he's big he's very strong and he's got incredible bravado a month ago he stole a new female so his group is now up to nine and he looks very well indeed wow that was an amazing sound just remembers knowing the term around okay all is fine he's on the move he's just strolled forwards the reason we're keeping this distance is because we carry all kinds of diseases even when we don't realize it the types of diseases that gorillas are simply not capable of defending themselves against they just don't have the immune system for our diseases so this is why it is enforced to try and stay about seven meters away from them to minimize the chance of us either catching a disease from them or giving a disease to them where this becomes much more complicated is when guerrillas come into contact with agricultural people around here then we have a real situation whereby agricultural animals domestic animals can transmit diseases to and from the gorillas a large female a baby here and the silver back there one of the animals most historically feared by people and yet look at this this is peace defined it really is they have been vilified for all time persecuted almost to the point of extinction now just a tiny population left the work the gorilla doctors of fred jam the rest of the team it's absolutely critical in ensuring the survival of our closest relatives one of the most iconic species on earth the way we have treated them through history is abhorrent diabolical i'm so glad that now there is a sufficient incentive to change to repair some of the damage we did to try and guarantee their they survival berries they are fitting enough that sound there is it all they are comfortable they are getting guitar they don't feel threatened by our presence [Music] i have to be careful not to get too close to the baby the silver back is just a few meters away and could charge there's a baby gorilla just behind me and the silverback just down there silvax and all the other gorillas in the family will defend the babies with their lives so when european zoos and other people have come in to try and steal baby gorillas to sell to the pet trade or to sell into zoos almost the whole family has had to be slaughtered because they will defend them with their lives it belongs here and not in someone's home and not in a zoo finally i hope we're learning learning that guerrillas belong in the wild next day i head out to visit some nearby villages who have a long history of living next to and among gorillas in the past some encounters with local farmers and hunters did not end well for the guerrillas i wanted to find out if attitudes are changing since the creation of the park in the early 1990s for the young guerrilla eco-tourism brings money this elder remembers when his people had a different view and when they met the gorillas was it always a friendly interaction [Music] that when they met them in the forest they used to think that they rusted person in the forest and they used to give them distance not going to close with them so they used to think it was a lost person in the forest is it bad luck to me they thought it was bad luck to meet a gorilla [Music] these dances put on for tourists visiting the gorillas help the community by providing funds for the care and schooling of village orphans [Music] [Applause] it's absolutely outstanding they've obviously really just adopted the spirit of the gorillas into their community the kids have a wildlife club where they learn about gorillas and here they are dancing the gorilla dance it's just some somehow become this figure of i don't know collectiveness within the community whereas they used to be seen obviously as a fearful figure a figure of some some form of bad luck when they went into the forest if they saw them they would be terrified whereas now clearly that's not the case clearly they revel in the fact that they have these incredible animals right here on their doorstep our next guerrilla encounter proves to be much closer to home and fresh wounds on a male tell us a marauding silverback is on the loose [Music] day two and we're told the guerrillas are on the move and close to the communities dr fred dr jan and jessica join me to locate the wandering gorilla troupe there we are shaking the tree just there just um 10 o'clock spotted one shaking a tree there 10 yards from the hut it's insanity there's the national park but all of this stuff for secondary growth is so rich in nutrients so tasty jan's just described it as a gorilla salad bowl very good description there's a gorilla amazingly right here as jan said it's eating bamboo which has been planted by people one of the things they're trying to do with local communities is to encourage them to plant the types of plants that grillers simply don't like in the buffer zone all right here we are with the black pack carimbezi at the moment is uh comfortably feeding one good thing to note as a habituated gorilla he's already aware of our presence but he's not disturbed he's behaving normally and that's what we like to see well here is a perfect example of the problem we're facing here's a gorilla strolling along a man-made path and uh helping himself to the plants that people have planted i can't blame the gorillas they're here to get some good food they had to get nourishment and there's fantastic nourishment in these plants here it's just brings them into conflict with people and one of the big problems is that people carry diseases that gorillas are i suppose physiologically naive to medically naive to they haven't come across the types of viruses that we carry on our data sheet we record everything that we can so if we don't see locomotion we record saw everything else but we didn't see locomotion and then that goes into a computer program spits out a report at the end of the month which helps us understand disease injury and the progression of that in these animals which is absolutely amazing and massively fat stomach used to distended gorillas are herbivores you wouldn't imagine it from pictures of grillers you see with massive great canines and looking incredibly aggressive but they're basically obligatory herbivores they only really eat eat vegetation it's very difficult to get much nutrients out of a leaf or out of out of a stem or something like that so they just have to eat constantly they eat up to 20 kilograms of vegetation a day that's a huge huge amount it's hard for a human being to eat a kilo of food a day i've tried it's really difficult there's babies playing up here yes it's got some amazing comical looks on their faces brilliant time love wrestling [Music] this is all obviously immensely fun for them but it serves a really useful purpose as well that prepares them for real battles when they're much older when these young male baby gorillas are going to be fighting for their own groups it's looked like a bit of playtime and it is and it's preparing them for life as an adult jan spots a large male black back with a wound see the scar on his back big wound healed really well he's apparently one week old he must have been very sore when it happens he's a black back sub-adult male so every now and then he's just going to be beaten up by the big selfie it's going to happen life is tough as a gorilla this playtime is preparing them for a life of battling for their own group and sometimes they get seriously injured i just spoke to jan she said that according to fred the silverback that attacked the black pack we've just seen along with a big scar was the same silverback that attacked one of the groups up in the mountain there's obviously a marauding lone silverback he's maybe trying to steal females to start his own group it's something they do they come into existing groups they beat everyone up and they try and steal females for themselves set themselves up as a harem leader then behind us i noticed two sub-adult gorillas feeding the female wants to get by us she's cautious as we are even though weighing half as much as a silverback she's still many times stronger than a man reassuring gorilla feeding grants are given then the male also decides to walk up to us he's getting very close so as the male walk past just as he was about to go gave a little nudge towards fred which as fred has just explained was playful if he was aggressive you would have noticed it in his face and in his demeanor it was just a little nudge just say hello have a little look at this and these gorillas actually identify people individually they know the trackers who work with them every single day and they see the trackers as their friends so when we are with the trackers that means the growers are relaxed because they know that their friends are here they know they're not under any form of threat whatsoever so what just happened there was we surprised a female as she was coming out from feeding and we're very close we're probably about six seven meters away from her and she just gave us a warning you could hear it you could see it on her face that was a real warning that wasn't playful that was you've overstepped the mark it was our fault we snuck up on him by accident what's remarkable that jan has just pointed out that the guerrillas are walking around on an official walk as a part of one of the lodges here we we're on the river loop walk people could be sitting having a pina colada in there not knowing that there's a group of 15 gorillas 20 meters away from them we always go around we never enter the group we trail the group or we go around the group to avoid a potential confrontation i step back to give this black back male some space there's three there it's a black pack it's young male gorilla one day he will be the leader of his own group probably already weighs about 120 kilos ridiculous look at the strength in his lance it's very relaxed it's casually feeding with his back to us amazing how calm they are but they know we don't mean them any harm we're here with the doctors and we're here with their trackers and they associate very positively with those guys yeah i think we can stop from here because the group is like going farther and farther into towards the people it's a community just there yeah the community people they may even go beyond this bush to avoid risks of disease transmission and stress so will the trackers now encourage the gorillas to go back towards the forest yes sure the truckers will begin now chasing them pushing them back to their habitat to the forest we have uh trained the truckers on the best way to handle that of pushing the guras back to the forest passively presumably it's impressive it's been an amazing experience obviously i've witnessed some of the things i never thought i'd have the privilege to see but it's just been made all the more pertinent by the fact that we are here in a tourist lodge it's a sign for a massage just down there and a gorilla walks straight past it and there's a tourist just wandered up there it shows the real problem that's happening here it's human animal conflict and the gorillas are the losers next i get an ape's eye view of the park and news of the marauding silverback comes in he's injured another silverback and the team springs into action back at the park we're waiting for any emergency health reports from trackers in guerrilla territory and i'm going to try and climb this tree to get a bit of a view over the park it's one of the most remarkable national parks left in africa one of only two places where the mountain gorillas still survive what better way to have a look at the park and view what remains of the gorilla's habitat am i getting high up into the canopy too high yeah fair way up a tree here and i could got a view over the valley on the far side so the proximity of these groups of gorillas which live all around me to those massive communities of people that live just over there it's genuinely a concern and something that the guerrilla doctors are really working hard to try and mitigate against now the gorillas in most parts of their habitat by random congo don't really climb trees but here they seem to for whatever reason there must be good food up here or potentially protection against ground-based predators such as leopards but being up here ape's eye view and also gives me an opportunity to really appreciate just the absolute wonders of the windy and penetrable national park back at the lodge it's day three of assessing the health of local mountain gorillas when we receive word of an attack on a silverback we can see if that one's available i received a call from warden in charge of tourism he just informed me about an injured silverback of mubarak group they can survive terrible lacerations with nothing but we just need to go and see and assess suddenly fred receives his phone call and action stations baby we're off so better go pack my stuff away when i came to uganda to meet the gorilla doctors i knew about the work that they did i knew that they performed medical interventions but i never imagined that i would get to see one myself and yet we have just received a phone call that a rogue silverback gorilla has raided another group to try and steal some females and has attacked the resident silverback who has suffered the types of injuries that certainly require an assessment and potentially even a medical intervention [Music] it's been many hours since the injured gorilla was seen and so the trackers have to find the group again this could take several hours of searching at an elevation of two thousand meters windy national park is up to about six thousand feet in height which adds a bit of a different element to the work in here it means it's not quite as hot as you would be lower down but it also means that the atmosphere is slightly rarified so you have to work a little bit harder to get oxygen to your lungs we met the ranges at eight o'clock this morning and we have hiked from about 1500 meters above sea level to about 2000 metres above sea level now but the trackers still haven't been able to find them 14 hours [Music] the other truckers they said they were following a fresh trail and they say the group is like facing this side oh so they're coming yeah based on the latest sightings we continue our search to find the injured silverback across rugged mountains and then even higher the gorillas don't just follow paths the gorillas are going where they want to go and the tracker's job is to locate where the gorillas spent the previous night this is all flattened by gorillas all of this sometimes the gorillas will move several kilometers in a day so the trackers have an incredibly difficult job it's the five call so we'll see what's happening we sound incredibly excited so what we're having to do is follow this path as far as you possibly can so we have the shortest distance to wherever they are they'll be anywhere they're gorillas do what they want and this group of gorillas are not only wandering around feeding they're trying to evade a marauding of a silverback or other group as well so even harder to find than normal [Music] no more i've been communicating to the truckers they said we branch this way and i'm not picking them on when they communicate because we're down in a tip yeah by month but uh they are saying when you get to the top of this we shall use another way of communication not using a radio not using a phone but using the mouse okay to get the right direction because the the radio is off and on off and on okay but this is the trailer are they with the gorillas now they are with the gorillas yeah let's go mate come back round this way so yeah the gorillas went up that way and then they swung around that's where they are now and now we are bushwhacking we're moving diagonally across a steep mountain slope covered in thick jungle vegetation and we've lost radio contacts with the trackers we're getting close enough that we can now hear them within 150 meters we've suddenly broken out of the dense canopy into this incredible caldera of low shrubs and tree ferns ancient ancient tree fence one of the oldest plants on earth that's exactly where the gorillas are they're down here surrounded by just the absolute glory of the african jungle this group of gorillas that was attacked is essentially fleeing from the marauding silverback that attacked them and as a result they are proving incredibly difficult to find just one last push up this hill [Music] we found the trackers and we hope the injured silverback and his group these rockers are here exactly as we thought so the trackers were tracking a wild group it's just kept on going and late in the afternoon they realise double back and now quarter past four in the afternoon we finally caught up with them these guys caught up with the gorillas impressive work this is not ordinary day tourist tracking our main focus is on the injured silverback we want to go in fast to do an initial assessment as fred is briefing us i notice a movement behind him incredibly it's the injured silverback come to pay us a visit [Music] i'm up a mountain in uganda's bowindi national park with the guerrilla doctors when kanyony the injured silverback we've been looking for suddenly appears we move carefully and speak quietly not to startle the 180 kilogram 400 pound giant and to get into position to photograph and assess his wounds he's approached within a few meters of us and we don't want him to feel threatened and possibly charge so the team makes reassuring gorilla feeding sounds to keep him calm immediately we spot some deep wounds this is one of the rarest animals on earth left wrist it's one of our closest relatives right wrist right shoulder right and at the moment it's an injured silverback left layer beam right here written about and filmed as being violent and aggressive and look at him he sat within three meets of us do you see his wrist it seems like he wants to show us his wounds he has a cut on his temple here is on his shoulder and deep on his wrist he's making relaxing sounds is that a picture of violence or is that a picture of peace so he's got gear here here jess has just got a couple of photographs of the injuries on his wrist very very he was really beating up worried about his right hand did you see that yeah well his left hand has some last reason but the right hand is what he was limping on it's pretty deep it's very deep on the right i would be more comfortable when we had antibiotics but i don't know if we have time what do you think i would be comfortable too to keep or shoot okay so we're trying to photograph the woods so the jam can make a good call about whether or not to intervene and they want to intervene but partial intervention so that means i haven't seen his pair antibiotics but no anesthetic the other thing we want to do is make sure we assess him completely before we dark because once we dart he's out of here we'd like to see his back we'd like to see his legs everyone close by maintains a submissive posture to keep the huge silver back calm as soon as we can of course as soon as we do everybody's gonna run that's fine so we're going to go and prepare the dart gun with some antibiotics because the wound on his wrist seems to be getting necrotic we've taken photographs of the wound on his face his shoulder and they all look fine but the one on his wrist the flies were around it and it was going a funny colour so they're gonna dart him with antibiotics and then the gorillas will go we're here to try and make sure that there's any of these left it's mind-blowing being next to an animal like that's that you've dreamed of my entire life and you see him and just them being this savage domineering violent beasts he walked to us lay down and chewed on a leaf that is a picture of peace their betrayal is completely unjust and must have contributed to their demise next the doctors take their best shot to treat a badly injured silverback the vets prepare the dart system that will deliver the antibiotic the jad's just charged the darts so that the antibiotics and the solution is right up the tip of the dart so when it hits the gorilla it's all going to go into him it could get dicey of course but hopefully he'll just run away but you never know brace yourself yeah yeah so he knows what the gun is he doesn't like the gun so we have to keep it hidden and what will be will be everybody knows that if he charges you should stand your ground and try not to be your pants noted [Laughter] it's never happened before but there's a first time for everything dr fred charges the dart gun a female gorilla watches nearby fred's just going to check whether he's got a shot the gorillas are just down there it's the injured silverback so they shot the gorilla from a distance of about four or five meters and the dart hit his back and just bounced straight out which means the antibiotic would have just sprayed over his back won't have gone into the muscle which is where it needs to go in to have its effect and he just turned around nonsensely shrugged his shoulders and strolled off so jan has just sent back to get the porters to bring down a replacement because fred has another dart but that has anti-inflammatory and the important thing here is the antibiotic because of that necrotic wound on his wrist but the silverback has moved deeper into the underbrush and we've got to find him to administer the medicine before sunset or risk being stuck in this mountainous jungle terrain after dark they're just trying to locate him he's close the dart is kept hidden from view searching for the silverback we come across a female who warns us about moving too far into her space then we find the silverback and he's relaxed time for fred to take his shot [Music] it's a perfect hit so they've just retrieved the dart and the sleeve has come back so they know it's gone in which means they know the antibiotics are in it which means he's gonna be all right from my research and now from my experience here in uganda it's clear that guerrilla life much as human life is fraught with the threat of intergroup violence but that unlike humans for guerrillas the violence stops there and their treatment of us despite the way that we have treated them throughout the generations is of moderation and tolerance but finally the tide is turning and groups such as the guerrilla doctors can perform their life-saving work with the full support of the communities that surround the protected areas of buwindi and the virungas where the last populations of mountain gorillas can still be found and the work that they are doing is absolutely critical they're saving a species one griller at a time [Music] since my visit kanyonyi the silverback recovered from his wounds and has expanded his family to 10 individuals [Music] you

Channel: Our World

Views: 78,941

Keywords: wildlife, wildlife documentary, natural history, earth, environment, documentary, documentaries, animals, nature, animal documentary, full documentary, nature documentary, planet earth, our world, wild animals, global warming, climate change, natural habitats, our planet

Id: Oft0UNaVL5s

Length: 46min 29sec (2789 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2022