'Charity App' Helps Gorillas

iGorilla lets users track Congo animals
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 18, 2010 2:06 AM CDT
'Charity App' Helps Gorillas
A mountain gorilla holding her baby is seen in the Virunga National Park, near the Uganda border in eastern Congo, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008. The director of Congo's Virunga Park says rangers who fled fighting between rebels and soldiers are returning to protect its endangered mountain gorillas. The park...   (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

A new application for iPhones and iPads lets users use their gadgets to help save Congo's critically endangered population of mountain gorillas. The iGorilla app makes it possible for users to follow gorilla families around remote areas of the war-torn country with updates from the rangers at Virunga National Park, home to roughly 200 of the world's 720 remaining mountain gorillas. Most of the app's $4 cost goes toward helping rangers protect the primates from poachers, the BBC reports.

"The survival of Congo's mountain gorillas relies on our ability to reach out to individuals around the world who care, and to keep them informed on a daily, even hourly basis, of the rangers' efforts to protect the wildlife in Virunga National Park," the park's director tells the Christian Science Monitor. "iGorilla provides us with exactly that opportunity."
(More Democratic Republic of Congo stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X