![\"Founders](\"https:\/\/imgs.mongabay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2025\/05\/02211016\/founders-briefs-780x90-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cHe was almost always smiling.\u201d<\/p>\n
In eastern Congo, where war and poverty have long eroded hope, that smile and the restless energy behind it mattered as much as any conservation plan. Dr. Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose, who died suddenly on August 18th, 2025, gave communities and colleagues the sense that protecting gorillas was not only a duty but a possibility. In the Mikeno Sector of Virunga National Park<\/a>, where mountain gorillas have endured despite decades of conflict, many credited his outlook with helping people believe that endurance was worth sustaining.<\/p>\n Born on Idjwi Island in Lake Kivu<\/a>, he grew up with his grandmother\u2019s tales about animals, which instilled in him the idea that his life\u2019s work lay with nature. A PhD in zoology at Kyoto University confirmed it. His thesis on chimpanzee ecology made him one of the first Congolese primatologists. That rarity brought responsibility.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt myself responsibility to go back home and inspire those young ones so that they can continue the research and the conservation and help the whole world to understand what is happening in DRC,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He did so with resolve. At the International Gorilla Conservation Program<\/a> he strengthened ranger-based monitoring across the Virunga Massif and Bwindi. Later, he founded Primate Expertise (PEx)<\/a>, a Congolese NGO that placed equal weight on science and people. Gorillas could not be saved without communities, he argued, so PEx dismantled snares, tracked apes with cameras, and planted food and medicinal trees germinated from seeds in gorilla dung. His \u201cApe Trees\u201d initiative distributed more than 60,000 seedlings<\/a>, bringing forest cover, household income, and renewed pride.<\/p>\n Grauer\u2019s gorilla, a critically endangered subspecies, was central to his work. He authored more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and co-led the 2018 reassessment of the mountain gorilla\u2019s conservation status. Yet his concern was broader. He trained hundreds of students at Congolese and Rwandan universities, served on the IUCN Primate Specialist Group<\/a>, and pressed international collaborators to elevate local leadership. The work, he said, \u201cis important and I\u2019m very happy because what I took as a decision is working.\u201d<\/p>\n Nowhere is his influence more visible than in eastern Congo\u2019s upland forests, where gorilla births are outpacing deaths for the first time in years. In a region where the outlook for peace has lately brightened, the sight of gorillas holding strong owes something to one man\u2019s insistence on smiling in the face of doubt\u2014and on teaching others to do the same.<\/p>\n Header image: Augustin K. Basabose. Image by Allison Shelley for Wild Earth Allies<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>Augustin K. Basabose. Image by Allison Shelley for Wild Earth Allies<\/p>\n