Sekenabo, a two-year-old male mountain gorilla with the Kabirizi group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park, has died after sustaining serious wounds in a poacher’s snare, writes Molly Feltner on the Great Apes Blog. Only about 720 of the highly endangered animals exist.
Park rangers who found and freed the trapped gorilla on Friday, February 5th, called in doctors with the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project to treat Sekenabo’s injuries, including severe damage to the leg that had been caught in the snare and skin torn from his upper lip and nostril as he tried to free himself. It took two days to locate the liberated gorilla, but on Sunday, a team found him cradled by his mother, Tumaini, with the rest of the Kabirizi group. A doctor tranquilized Tumaini and Sekenabo...
... and treated the young male’s wounds with stitches and antibiotics. He survived the procedure, but was found dead the next day.
Read more about Sekenabo or learn more about Virunga's mountain gorillas.