“ That might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming,” Tara Stoinksi, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, tells me.

The behavior she ’ s referring to occurs in mountain gorilla groups, such as a “dominance transfer,” where a younger male silverback takes over leadership from an older male, and infanticide, where an outsider or ostracized gorilla kills the offspring of a new mother within the group. The former of these was captured on camera within days of filming for the new Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough .

Stoinski joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her role as a scientific adviser on the years-long project, the rarity of the behaviors captured on camera, and her thoughts on gorilla conservation in the Greater Virunga Landscape of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“These gorillas now live basically in a small island of forests surrounded by some of the highest rural human population densities in Africa,” Stoinski says while discussing conservation challenges for mountain gorillas.

Filming for the documentary took place in Rwanda, where the pressures and challenges mountain gorillas face differ from those in Virunga National Park in the neighboring DRC. Threats to gorillas in the latter include armed conflict , poaching , logging , and hunting for the wild meat trade.

Stoinski says that within Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, where the documentary was filmed, the threats are different.

“Climate change is an issue for the gorillas … also, climate change affects the people that live near the gorillas. And so if they are struggling and their livelihoods are affected, that may mean that there’s more pressure put on the park. Disease is certainly a risk for the gorillas.”

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Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky .

Banner image: A male gorilla, Ubwuzu, as featured in the Netflix documentary. Image by Ben Cherry/Courtesy of Netflix/Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Tara Stoinski: I think the film does such an amazing job of showing the similarities between us and gorillas, and I think that’s such an important message for people to understand, given how endangered not just mountain gorillas but all types of gorillas are, that we share a lot in common with them. I always say we share some of the things that we admire the most in our own species, and you see all of that in the film. You see these long-term friendships that gorillas form. You see them caring for the most vulnerable in their society. So I’m really thrilled that people get to see what we see every day, and what we’ve seen over the last sixty years, which is how much these animals are like us.

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal land. Today on the newscast, we speak with Tara Stoinski, the CEO and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Along with her colleague Veronica Vecellio, the two served as scientific advisors to the recently released Netflix documentary, A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough . This documentary, narrated by David Attenborough and directed by Oscar-winner James Reed, follows the interpersonal relations and behavior of a group of gorillas on the Rwandan side of the Virunga Mountains. This group of gorillas is descended from a gorilla who arguably became an icon when he embraced a younger Attenborough in the field back in 1978. The touching moment when this three-year-old gorilla approached and then joyfully played with Attenborough was captured on camera. His name was Pablo, and he would go on to form the largest ever-known group of mountain gorillas. Spanning over two years of filming, the documentary captures never-before-seen gorilla behavior, such as a dominance takeover in which a younger silverback, Ubwuzu, usurps the leadership position of the elder, Gicurasi. Stoinski explains that this happened very early on in the filming process, and she discusses with me the unique behaviors this documentary highlights, the extensive process of filming it, and briefly, the state of conservation in Virunga. While A Gorilla Story , set in Rwanda, does not highlight the political or social factors of other nations sharing the Virunga landscape, Stoinski does briefly address her thoughts on the March 23 Movement conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and also generally the pressures that gorillas face threatening their conservation. Tara Stoinski, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Tara: Thanks so much for having me.

Mike: I just wanted to say congratulations on this project. It’s a pretty big undertaking, and the film is quite something to watch, I have to say. It was a really moving piece of work. I’m curious to hear about your role as a scientific advisor. What kind of input did you provide on this film?

Tara: Great, thanks, and I’m glad you enjoyed the film. We’re incredibly proud of it. We have been involved really since day one. We started discussions with Silverback Films, who produced the film, back in 2020. They came to us and said, “We’re interested in doing a film about gorillas. What are the things that are happening with gorillas that you think would be interesting to cover?” And my colleague, Veronica Vecellio, who was on the call with me, and I immediately both said, “The story of Pablo’s group.” This is an incredible group. It’s broken all sorts of records. It dates back to Dian Fossey’s time in a lot of ways. We helped think of the concept behind the group and then have been involved all along in supporting the team and understanding the behaviors that they saw, because a lot ended up happening unexpectedly, I think, to all of us. There were a lot of changes in the group that happened during the two years that they were filming. So really interpreting that, helping explain why we think that happened, what it meant, and then we also really helped coordinate on the ground in the field. So when they were out with Pablo’s group, they were always out with our trackers as well as members of the Rwandan park authorities. They would help them identify the gorillas, really anticipate when behaviors might be happening so they could frame those shots. So it’s really been a partnership over the last six years on the film.

Mike: And so when you say you helped them interpret behaviors, can you give me an example? Was there a moment where something happened between Ubwuzu and Gicurasi where they came to you and said, “What’s happening here?” and you told them what had occurred?

Tara: Yeah, it’s more the context, what generally happens in a male dominance transfer, which happened in this group. The intra-group infanticide was obviously a big deal. We’ve only seen that two other times in almost sixty years of watching the gorillas. So helping to explain why that might have happened, what was going on in the group, the transfer of Inyange into the family group, and what the dynamics are generally like for a female when she transfers into a group. So just providing that broader context of these behaviors that could then help create the script. Because obviously you want the gorillas on the screen. You don’t want to be talking over everything. So trying to think, how can the script concisely interpret what’s happening while letting people really enjoy the beauty of the gorillas and the behaviors?

Mike: Now, you mentioned that there were some things that you weren’t expecting to see, or at least some surprising things that happened. What were some of those things?

Tara: The dominance shift, which happened, I think, within a few days of filming beginning. Gicurasi was in his mid to late 20s at the time they started filming, and that certainly isn’t past prime for a dominant silverback. But he had some illnesses, and I think Ubwuzu, who was up and coming, just took advantage of that opportunity while he wasn’t feeling great to come in and challenge his dominance. And so that was not something that we were really expecting at the time. And to be able to capture it on film, again, in sixty years we’ve only witnessed a handful of dominance takeovers. So the fact that it just happened to happen while the film crews were there was amazing. Female transfers, that was a really interesting opportunity to see Inyange transfer into the group. Now, that is pretty typical for female gorilla society. That’s how females move between families. But again, just having the opportunity to capture that during the course of filming, and then finally the intra-group infanticide. None of us were expecting that. It’s incredibly rare. And so understanding the context around that and what that meant for the family and for Inyange, et cetera.

Mike: Yeah. For folks that haven’t seen the film, much of this film focuses on the Pablo group, obviously. But I found Imfura’s story to be really, really moving. Obviously it’s a very tragic story and it’s very sad, but he doesn’t start out as being the type of gorilla who would do something like that. He has that relationship with the very young gorilla, and he seemed very sweet to him. And so I just found him to be a very tragic part of this picture. Do you have any comments about that story, about what you witnessed, about Imfura? Because I thought that was a really interesting part of the story.

Tara: Yeah, I don’t think those two things are incompatible, right? He did have a great relationship and came from a very close family. His mom died when he was 12, and so he helped care for his younger brother, who was only about three and a half years old at the time. And it’s very typical that silverback gorillas like to interact with youngsters. Like us, gorillas all have individual personalities, and so some males are more attracted to infants and like to play with them more than others. But it is a very common male reproductive strategy to try and get rid of the offspring of competitors. And with Ubwuzu coming in and taking over dominance and Inyange being a new female, there was a lot of disruption in the group. And Imfura took advantage of that opportunity to try and probably, what our estimate is, with Inyange losing her infant, maybe she would have thought, “This group isn’t the best group for me,” and maybe she would have left with Imfura, and that might have been an opportunity for him to start his own family. So I don’t think that those two things are incompatible, and I don’t think that he did that out of any bullying or other things that happened to him in the family. I think he was being a strategic male gorilla and thinking about his longer-term future, and how he could potentially have females join him, and he could become a successful male on his own. And I will say that what was very interesting is that after the filming ended, he went on and killed three other infants in that group, including the next infant up in Inyange’s. So while we have sympathy for Imfura, he was pretty disruptive in the group overall. He continued that behavior, which again, really surprised us because we’ve not seen that before from a male gorilla.

Mike: And this all occurred after he was pushed out and ostracized from the group, right?

Tara: The additional killings, yeah. He was pushed out, but he remained in the area and on the periphery. He joined the group again. So he’s been in and out of the group for the last few years. Filming ended two years ago. After he was in the group for a bit, two new females had joined Pablo’s group, and he was successful in herding them off and forming a group for a little bit of time, but they actually didn’t stay with him for very long. They rejoined Pablo’s family, and so now he is a solitary silverback. And again, being a solitary silverback is pretty typical. In fact, the majority of silverbacks, particularly in the other three types of gorillas, live a large part of their lives as solitary individuals. So it’s not an uncommon social life, or lack of a social life, for a male gorilla to live on their own. And we have some male gorillas that, after they leave their family, are never successful in forming a group, and they live their entire lives on their own.

Mike: Now, for folks listening who don’t know the context, Pablo is the ancestor of this group. That’s why it’s called the Pablo group. But he’s the one who, when he was three years old, embraced David Attenborough when he was in the field as a youngster, and he went on to start what I believe Attenborough called the largest group of mountain gorillas ever known. So can you talk about the significance of that?

Tara: Yeah. David Attenborough met Pablo when he was three, went to do a story about the role of the opposable thumb, and during that, Pablo just went and sat on his lap. And so the storyline changed a lot, and it became, I think, one of the most iconic moments of wildlife filmmaking, across the board. And that was in 1978. And so now revisiting Pablo’s family, almost 50 years later, is what the movie focuses on. In 1993, Pablo was born into Group 5, which is one of the original groups that Dian Fossey habituated and studied. In 1993, the dominant silverback of that group died, and at that time, the group fissioned. And so Pablo took a number of the family members and formed what is called Pablo’s group, and was the dominant silverback of that group for several years. Then he was actually replaced in terms of dominance by another individual named Cantsbee. But the two of them very much had an alliance and worked together, and that is likely a lot of the reason why that group was able to grow to 65 gorillas. So it’s not only the largest group of mountain gorillas, it’s the largest group of gorillas in the wild that we’ve ever heard of. An average gorilla family is usually about 10 individuals. And so Cantsbee and Pablo worked together to manage that group up until Pablo’s death in 2008.

Mike: Yeah, and that’s really unique, from what I understand, because Attenborough talks about that in the film, that when Pablo was challenged, an alliance was formed between him and the rival gorilla, Cantsbee, as you described. I find that to be something worth discussing. It seems like it could be a bit of an allegory for the way we humans interact with one another. Forming partnerships and alliances might be a better way to go about things rather than having a simple hierarchical structure where there is a single dominant figure at the top. Do you have any more insights into the significance of that partnership and that alliance?

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