Scientists from Oxford Brookes University, England, looked at hundreds of Instagram posts of people who visited the animals in East Africa and found most tourists are close enough to gorillas to spread viruses and diseases, according to a press release. of the university Tuesday.
“The risk of transmitting disease between visitors and gorillas is very worrying,” said lead author of the study, Gaspard Van Hamme, a former Oxford University student who began the study, during his master’s program.
“It is crucial that we strengthen and enforce tour regulations to ensure that gorilla treks do not further threaten these already endangered monkeys.”
Mountain gorillas are indicated as endangered, according to the release there are an estimated 1 063 of them left in the wild.
They live in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Virunga National Park), Uganda (Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park), and Rwanda (Volcanoes National Park).
Researchers posted 858 photos from 2013-2019 on Instagram under two hashtags – #gorillatrekking and #gorillatracking, the study said. Of that number, 86% showed people within four meters (13.1 feet) of gorillas, and 25 of the photos showed tourists touching gorillas.
Researchers found that tourists were close enough to the East African primates to enable transmission.
“We have found that face masks are rarely worn by tourists who visit gorillas and that it is possible for transmission of diseases between humans and the gorillas they visit,” said Magdalena Svensson, a lecturer in biological anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, in a statement said.
Those who visit gorillas in the wild have been asked to wear face masks even before the pandemic, Svensson told CNN as part of the ‘Best Practice Guidelines for Great Ape Tourism’ developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“They are so genetically close to us that they can get most things we can get” – like flu, Ebola and colds, she said.
Now that we know that gorillas can catch Covid-19, it is even more important that visitors wear a mask, Svensson added.
Svensson told CNN visitors are also asked to stay a minimum of seven meters away from the animals, but the image analysis shows that the average distance has decreased over time.
“It’s a big health risk for them,” she said, even at four meters (13.1 feet) diseases can be transmitted.
Social media expectations
Social media and the desire to get a good photo to post online may be one explanation, Svensson said. “We know how effectively social media can change people’s attitudes and behaviors,” she said.
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, of Conservation Through Public Health, a non-profit organization working to protect gorillas in Uganda, said: ‘This research provides a valuable perspective on how many tourists are willing to have their close encounters with mountain gorillas via To share Instagram. , which creates expectations for future tourists. ‘
“It emphasizes a great need for responsible tourism to provide adequate protection while minimizing the transmission of diseases, especially now during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Kalema-Zikusoka said in the press release.
Svensson emphasized that visitors provide valuable financial support for conservation efforts and local communities. The solution is not to stop tourism, but to better educate people about the risks, she said.
Although there is no evidence that wild gorillas have developed Covid-19 so far, researchers will continue to monitor visitor behavior, Svensson added.
The research was published in the journal People and Nature.
In January, eight western lowland gorillas living in the San Diego Zoo were found to have Covid-19. The zoo said Tuesday that the gorilla troop has been seen in public again after fully recovering.