Uganda is home to the world’s largest national population of mountain gorillas.
Most of Uganda’s mountain gorillas live in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the adjoining Sarambwe ecosystem in southwestern Uganda. The 2018 census recorded 459 gorillas in that population, making Uganda the country with the largest single national population of the subspecies. A smaller Ugandan group also occupies Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in the Virunga Mountains.
Mountain gorillas are found nowhere else in the wild outside Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Virunga population is shared across those three countries, so figures for Rwanda or the DRC can be mistakenly compared with the entire cross-border population rather than with Uganda’s national total. Across Bwindi-Sarambwe and the Virunga massif, the 2018 global estimate was about 1,063 mountain gorillas.
The species was once considered critically endangered, but sustained protection, veterinary work, habitat management, and carefully controlled tourism have helped numbers recover. They remain endangered, however, because their range is tiny and divided among protected forests.