Scientists, however, warn that they could quickly slip back into being critically endangered. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which sets the conservation status of species, changed their status from "crticially endangered" to "endangered" in 2008 as their numbers improved. The majority of mountain gorillas are habituated to human presence because of the tourism industry, and while there are strict sanitation protocols in place and touching the gorillas is prohibited, disease could spread quickly.
Catching illnesses from humans is also a threat. Climate change also poses a threat: While gorillas are adaptive, moving to higher elevations to adapt to warmer temperatures, those areas are densely populated with little forest remaining. They often get caught in snares laid out to trap other animals for bushmeat. Habitat loss is a major threat: agriculture, illegal mining, and forest destruction for charcoal production have degraded their forests.
These gorillas live on the green, volcanic slopes of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo-areas that have seen much human violence from which the gorillas have not escaped unscathed. As their name hints, they live in the mountains at elevations between 8,000 and 13,000 feet. Mountain gorillas are a subspecies of eastern gorilla ( Gorilla beringei). There are about a thousand mountain gorillas remaining on Earth, and about half live in the forests of the Virunga mountains in central Africa.
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