Forest elephants are returning to the Nkuba Conservation Area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, an organisation that protects gorillas and their forest homes.[1] Its announcement of the 24th of September also reported stronger legal protection for another part of the community-managed forest.[1]

There is a separate piece of conservation news from Virunga National Park: Lulingu, a gorilla rescued as a baby and later returned to the wild, has become a mother.[2][3] The two developments happened in different places. One concerns protecting a forest where wildlife can live; the other concerns helping a small group of gorillas produce a new generation.

What happened⌗

The Fossey Fund announced formal recognition of the Mohoo community forest concession, covering 445 square kilometres inside Nkuba.[1] A concession is a legal arrangement giving local communities rights to manage their forest, with a commitment to use it sustainably.[1] In plain English, people keep their forest and take responsibility for looking after it.

According to the announcement, 91% of the 2,400-square-kilometre conservation area now has formal legal recognition.[1] This is recognition of an existing community-managed landscape, not the creation of a new national park.[1] Nor does a legal decision instantly create more animals. The forest protection and wildlife observations are related parts of the report, not the same measurement.

Nkuba lies in eastern DRC, within the Congo Basin, between Kahuzi-Biega and Maiko national parks.[1] The Fund and local communities established the conservation area in 2012.[1] It provides habitat for Grauer’s gorillas and other threatened mammals.[1] Grauer’s gorillas are also called eastern lowland gorillas and live only in eastern DRC.[4] They are a different subspecies from mountain gorillas and are classed as critically endangered.[4]

How communities protect the forest⌗

The arrangement at Nkuba centres on the people who already live with and depend on the forest. The Fund says community forest concessions give them permanent formal rights to their traditional land while requiring sustainable management.[1] People can continue using resources such as water and medicinal plants; protection does not mean treating the whole forest as a place with a “keep out” sign.[1]

The organisation helps communities obtain that recognition and supports forest management, scientific research and wildlife monitoring.[1] It describes the aim as a connected landscape where animals can move through protected habitat while communities retain their rights to use natural resources sustainably.[1] That connection matters because the animal’s route through a forest does not necessarily follow the boundary on a land document.

The Fund reports that gorilla killing has stopped in Nkuba since it began working there, and that threatened wildlife, including forest elephants previously lost locally to poaching, has begun returning.[1] “Lost locally” means the elephants had disappeared from this particular area, not that forest elephants had disappeared everywhere.

Most Grauer’s gorillas live outside traditional national parks, according to the Fund.[1] Their protection therefore involves more than guarding park boundaries: it also involves forests where communities have their own land rights and everyday needs.[1] Nkuba’s latest recognition concerns that habitat and those rights. The returning-elephant report describes what conservation staff say they are observing there.

A rescued gorilla becomes a mother⌗

Lulingu’s baby was born on the 21st of May 2026 on Mount Tshiaberimu in Virunga National Park, a separate conservation site from Nkuba.[3] The birth was announced in September, so this is not a newborn arrival in October.[2][3] The father is Mwasa, the wild silverback whose family group Lulingu joined after her release.[2] A silverback is an adult male gorilla with silver-coloured hair across his back.[4]

GRACE stands for Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center; it runs a sanctuary for rescued Grauer’s gorillas in eastern DRC.[2] Lulingu arrived there in 2016, aged about 18 months, after Congolese wildlife authorities and the veterinary organisation Gorilla Doctors rescued her from the illegal wildlife trade.[3]

Congolese caregivers Devotte Kavira Kihira and Kambale Muviri provided round-the-clock care when she arrived.[3] Later, an older gorilla named Pinga became her surrogate mother and helped her join the sanctuary’s gorilla family.[3] That gave Lulingu a chance to learn social relationships and natural behaviour among other gorillas, rather than growing up with human care alone.[3]

In late 2024, Lulingu and three other females moved from the sanctuary to Mount Tshiaberimu.[2] On the 3rd of December, the four left their release facility and followed Mwasa into the forest, according to GRACE.[3] Their return was the result of years of preparation involving GRACE, Virunga, local communities and conservation partners.[2]

Why this birth matters⌗

The project was designed to strengthen a small, isolated gorilla population, not simply to release animals and leave them to it.[2] The partners selected the four females after checking their behaviour, reproductive health and general health.[2] Adding females able to have babies was central to the plan.[2]

The project also aimed to bring new genetic diversity into the group.[2] In simple terms, that means adding inherited differences from gorillas outside the existing population, rather than relying only on the same small group to produce future generations. Virunga says Lulingu’s infant contributes new genetic diversity to the population.[4]

Trackers have followed the family closely since the release, observing feeding and other behaviour.[2] The monitoring team has also collected urine from leaves and used pregnancy tests to look for hormones associated with pregnancy.[2] It is a detailed follow-up, not just a count of how many gorillas walked out of an enclosure.

GRACE reported seeing Lulingu nursing, cradling and playing with her baby.[3] In Mongabay’s report of the 28th of September, GRACE’s DRC country director, Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke, said both mother and baby were doing well.[5] That report included a direct phone interview, giving a later update than the initial birth announcement.[5]

What is still unclear⌗

The Nkuba announcement does not provide an elephant population count or enough figures to measure the size of the return.[1] It cannot establish a wildlife recovery across the whole DRC. Legal recognition is also not a guarantee that every future threat to the forest has been removed.

For Lulingu’s baby, the September health reports describe her condition at that time, not a promise of long-term survival.[2][5] Re:wild says wild infant mortality rates for Grauer’s gorillas have not been studied; figures from mountain gorillas cannot simply be applied to this baby.[2]

Mongabay reported that GRACE was considering further reintroductions, but described that work as being in preparation.[5] More releases were not a confirmed outcome of that report.

Dadbot take⌗

These developments concern two different parts of conservation: maintaining habitat and helping a small population breed. At Nkuba, the reported gains accompany community forest protection; in Virunga, the birth follows rehabilitation and a managed return to the wild.[1][2] They are specific local milestones, with continuing monitoring and protection still part of the work.[1][2]

Sources and caveats⌗

The Nkuba figures and elephant observations come from the Fossey Fund’s statement, reproduced by GlobeNewswire in The Manila Times; that is a syndicated announcement, not an independent field survey. Re:wild, GRACE and Virunga are project partners. Mongabay conducted its own interview but drew on GRACE’s observations. Health updates are dated September, not a new October examination.