Gorillas are critically endangered great apes facing habitat destruction, disease from human contact, and snaring, with individual animals experiencing significant welfare challenges in declining populations.
Individual gorillas face welfare challenges both from direct threats and from the chronic stress of living in shrinking, fragmented populations. Snare injuries cause severe, often untreated wounds in wild gorillas - hands amputated by wire snares impair foraging ability, affecting individual welfare and survival for years. Disease transmission from human tourists causes respiratory illnesses that are mild in humans but potentially fatal in gorillas with no immunity. Orphaned gorilla infants require extensive, costly rehabilitation - without intervention they cannot survive.