If your friends went “gorilla tracking,” it’s highly likely they did so in Rwanda. There, mountain gorillas roam the misty Virunga Mountains, a volcanic range shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or D.R.C., and Uganda. Rwanda has done an extraordinary job of promoting them—pushing eco-tourism to fund conservation, welcoming splashy lodges, and serving as the backdrop for the 1988 biopic Gorillas in the Mist, about American primatologist and conservationist Dian Fossey.
But draw a line west, over the D.R.C. almost to the Atlantic coast, and you reach the Republic of the Congo, where another great gorilla population awaits. Native to the Congo Basin, western lowland gorillas receive far less attention than their mountain cousins. Between 7,500 and 10,000 of them live in Odzala-Kokoua National Park—wedged between the borders of Cameroon and Gabon. They are slightly smaller, more adaptable, and more resilient than the mountain gorilla—restricted to a specific high-altitude diet—but certainly no less impressive.
