“The silverback watches us go with a sidelong look that seems equal parts bored, grumpy, and sad. What is he thinking?…
I’m guessing he’s aware something isn’t right and hasn’t been for a long time. The world has changed drastically in his lifetime: less forest, more people, some friendly, most not.
He couldn’t possibly know that every one of his kind would barely fill a large theater, that there are probably far too few left for the species to survive–that by now it’s just a matter of time.
Could he?”

Julian Smith, from his book Crossing the Heart of Africa, speaking about the 700 or so remaining mountain gorillas after visiting some of them on Mount Sabinyo, Rwanda.

They are the least lucky of the gorillas: but they have cousin eastern lowland gorillas numbering about 4,000 in the Congo; and they have some other cousins, the western lowland gorillas, who may number 100,000 and occupy a number of central African countries.