Although the mountain gorilla population has increased to 1006 at present, the rare species are still at the risk of extinction being so close to human beings together with rapid loss of habitat. The increase begun after the introduction of gorilla tourism by an American zoologist Dian Fossey in 1953 who dedicated her life to save the rare species. The mountain gorillas are only found in the virunga conservation area stretching across the borders of Uganda in the Bwindi impenetrable forest national park and the Mgahinga gorilla national park, Rwanda in the volcanoes national park and the Democratic republic of Congo in the virunga national park.
However, despite of the increasing population of mountain gorillas, having 1006 individuals in the whole world is still very tiny population in that it would only take a big natural disaster or disease outbreak to lower those numbers significantly. In order to address this risk of extinction, research has suggested that Africa’s endangered mountain gorillas are successfully using inbreeding as a strategy to stave off extinction in contrary to the standard thinking of harmful inbreeding.
Inbreeding has proved to be genetically beneficial although there were concerns that the low level of genetic diversity in mountain gorillas may make them more vulnerable to environmental change and to disease, including cross-infectious strains of human viruses.
Despite of how inbreeding has been thought to be dangerous, it is different with the endangered mountain gorillas living in the forests of central Africa in that it has likely helped them survive. Research from the genomics and genetics research center Welcome Trust Sanger Institute suggests that inbreeding has helped mountain gorillas overcome harmful genetic mutations as adverse genetic material disappears from the gene pool.
Presently, it is proved by research that the rare mountain gorillas, along with eastern lowland gorillas their closely related neighbors will continue to survive. This is contrary to the previous belief from the poor-quality DNA obtained from fecal and hair samples that have been analyzed at a handful of genetic loci.
It is not the fact that though comparable levels of inbreeding contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals the very close relatives, there is great hope that mountain gorillas are likely to be more resilient. This indicates that there is no reason why mountain gorillas should not flourish for thousands of years to come.
It was after the rapid drop in mountain gorilla population size that extensive inbreeding was introduced in. This raised concerns that a small gene pool could harm the gorillas’ long-term future, particularly their ability to survive infectious diseases and cope with environmental change.
The positive belief is brought about by the fewer harmful loss-of-function variants that were found in the mountain gorilla population than in the more numerous western gorilla populations. These variants stop genes from working and can cause serious, often fatal, health conditions.
By analyzing the variations in each genome, research has also discovered that mountain gorillas have survived in small numbers for thousands of years.
Inbreeding helps the mountain gorillas to genetically adapt to surviving in smaller populations in addition to removing the harmful genetic variations from the population. This prove was got from the blood samples that were got from different species of mountain gorillas.
In conclusion therefore, mountain gorillas are believed to survive and increase in number with the help of inbreeding and that fact that they have been living in hundreds for the past thousands of years. However in addition to poaching, mountain gorillas area rapidly losing their habitats in that 90 percent of their existing habitat will be gone by 2030, if no action is taken now to protect it.