Rescued from traffickers as a baby, this gorilla just gave birth in the wild

Lulingu was 18 months old when wildlife traffickers took her. Congolese rangers and the nonprofit Gorilla Doctors got her out, and she spent years at GRACE, a sanctuary built to feel like a real gorilla home, raised alongside adoptive mothers. In 2024 she was released near Mount Tshiaberimu in Virunga National Park. This May, she became a mother — the birth conservationists call the strongest sign yet that a rescued gorilla can truly live wild again. 'We knew her as a baby, we watched her grow, be rehabilitated, and now she is a mother,' said GRACE's country director Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke.