Scientists from Oxford Brookes University, England, looked at hundreds of Instagram posts from people visiting the animals in East Africa and found that most tourists were close enough to gorillas to spread viruses and diseases, according to a press release from the university Tuesday.
“The risk of disease spread between visitors and gorillas is very worrying,” said study lead author Gaspard Van Hamme, an alumnus of Oxford Brookes University who began working on the study during his master’s program.
“It is vital that we strengthen and enforce tour rules to ensure that gorilla plowing practices no longer pose a threat to these endangered large onions. “
Mountain gorillas are listed as endangered, with about 1,063 of them left in the wild, according to the news.
They live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Virunga National Park), Uganda (Impenetrable Bwindi National Park and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park), and Rwanda (Volcano National Park).
Researchers looked at 858 photos posted on Instagram from 2013-2019 under two hasthtags – #gorillatrekking and #gorillatracking, the study said. Of that number, 86% showed humans within four meters (13.1 feet) of gorillas, and 25 of those photos showed tourists touching gorillas.
The researchers found that tourists were close enough to East African prime ministers to make the spread possible.
“We have found that tourists rarely visit gorillas on face masks and that allows for the spread of disease between humans and the gorillas they visit,” said Magdalena Svensson, lecturer in biological anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, in a statement.
Visitors to gorillas in the country were asked to wear face masks even before the pandemic, Svensson told CNN, as part of the “Best Practice Guide for Ape Tourism” developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“They are as genetically close to us as they can get most of what we can get” – such as the flu, Ebola and the common cold, she said.
Now that we know that gorillas can catch Covid-19, it’s even more important that visitors wear a mask, Svensson said.
Svensson told CNN that visitors are also asked to stay at least seven meters (23 feet) away from the animals, but image analysis shows that the average distance has fallen over time.
“It’s a huge health risk for them,” she said, explaining that even at four meters Illnesses (13.1ft) can be given.
Social media ‘expectations’
Social media and the desire to get a good picture for posting online could be one explanation, Svensson said. “We know how effective social media is at changing people’s attitudes and behavior,” she said.
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, from Conservation Through Public Health, a non-profit organization working to protect gorillas in Uganda, said: “This research provides a valuable insight into the number of tourists willing to be. sharing what they are too close to mountain gorillas via Instagram. , which will create expectations for future tourists. “
“It highlights the great need for responsible tourism to provide adequate protection while reducing the transmission of disease, especially now in the time of 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 educate people about the risks, she said.
While there is no evidence that wild gorillas have developed Covid-19 to date, researchers will monitor visitor behavior, Svensson said.
The research was published in the journal People and Nature.
In January, Covid-19 was found in eight western gorillas inhabited by San Diego Zoo. The zoo on Tuesday said the gorilla force was back in public view after it had fully recovered.