Beneath the dense forest canopy of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a troop of gorillas is being quietly observed by a group of tourists who have each paid $800 for the privilege of the experience. In villages around the park, a thriving economy has grown off the back of the gorillas’ presence here, from the sale of wood carvings to visitors and the provision of accommodation for up to 40,000 tourists a year. In the national park, which sprawls along the edge of the Rift Valley and the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), there are many local jobs for rangers and guides.
But deeper into the forest, more mountain gorillas live away from human contact, quietly enhancing the natural world around them through their daily routines of foraging, nest building and dispersing seeds. And, crucially, by increasing their own populations. In the 1980s, the mountain gorilla was on the fast track to extinction.
Now, there are more than 1,100 living in thriving populations in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. Theirs is a story of conservation success that spills beyond the species themselves, into the nature they live in, and the human communities they exist alongside. According to this year’s Living Planet Report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), over the past 52 years, there has been a 73 percent decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations.
Across the world, habitats have been degraded and lost as overexploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive species take their toll. But the report also highlights important recoveries in populations of green turtles, bluefin tuna, tigers and Southern African elephants. Nature can recover, and these stories are a powerful reminder of this.” The WWF says these conservation successes demonstrate how international partnerships drive results.
Intergovernmental commitments from tiger range countries, including India, Bhutan, Nepal, Laos and China, helped increase global wild tiger numbers by more than 70 percent between 2010 and 2025. In 2025, the green sea turtle became the first marine turtle ever to be downlisted from “endangered” to “least concern” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List. That reflected 50 years of species research, active protection of nesting females and eggs, measures to reduce fishing gear and sustained community engagement.
Professor Brendon Godley is a leading conservation scientist at the University of Exeter and the Sharjah Marine Research Centre in the United Arab Emirates and has spent much of his career dedicated to researching and protecting sea turtles. However, they are not grounds for complacency.” Indeed, these conservation triumphs are small battles won in an ongoing war against the degradation of nature. The WWF’s Living Planet Report highlights the three systems that are primarily driving the destruction of nature: the global food system, which is the leading cause of habitat loss as areas are cleared to grow crops; the energy system, which fuels climate change through burning fossil fuels; and the finance system, which bankrolls harmful activities, for example, large-scale infrastructure or mining projects.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
