Both Eastern and Western gorillas are highly threatened by illegal poaching for the bushmeat trade. They are also killed in order for people to use their body parts in medicines and magical charms.
Highly infectious diseases, like the Ebola virus, pose critical threats to gorillas. A 2006 paper in the journal Science implicated Ebola as the killer of more than 5,000 gorillas in Lossi Sanctuary, northwest Democratic Republic of Congo.
