The most comprehensive survey conducted of elephant numbers in the Central African nation of Gabon since the late 1980s has found elephants occurring in higher numbers than previously thought.

A new study published in the journal Diversity and Distributions predicts massive range declines of Africa’s great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos – due to the impacts of climate change, land-use changes and human population growth.

The Wildlife Conservation Society extends congratulations to conservationist Lee White who was named this week by President Ali Bongo Ondimba as Gabon’s Minister for Forests, Sea, the Environment and Climate Plan.

Her Excellency Rosalie Matondo, the Republic of Congo’s Minister of Forestry Economy, the US Ambassador, Todd Haskell, the Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program, and local authorities gathered in Sibiti in the Lekoumou Department to create, by official decree, Congo’s fifth national park - the Ogooué-Leketi National Park.

A massive decade-long study of Western Equatorial Africa’s gorillas and chimpanzees has uncovered both good news and bad about our nearest relatives. The good news: there are one third more western lowland gorillas and one tenth more central chimpanzees than previously thought. The bad news: the vast majority of these great apes (80 percent) exist outside of protected areas, and gorilla populations are declining by 2.7 percent annually.