In October 2017, four western lowland gorilla brothers from Port Lympne Reserve in Kent, made the journey to a protected reserve in Congo with The Aspinall Foundation. This film shows their journey back to the wild.
What an amazing sight, the first silverback came out of the cage like a rocket, each one gets to enjoy freedom for the first time in their lives! No words of gratitude can convey how Aspinall is making a difference in the lives of these endangered Gorillas and the ecosystem!
This just filled my heart with love with what has happened here. How happy you must be knowing them while they grew up in kent and then being able to release them back into their protected wild environment. The gorillas will have the time of their lives in this huge open space. I have admired and adored gorillas for years and really hate seeing them in such small enclosures as they do in Japan. This is a great endangerment of the species act that will likely add to this beautiful population. I live in Illinois, but I think my true calling would have been working with wildlife in some form like this in a different country. My whole heart is about the conversation of gorillas, orangutans and other animals they need to be in the wild but protected from us. They deserve that. It must have been one of the greatest feelings in your life to do this and know they were safe and happy.
John Aspinall would be so proud and sadly he didn't live to see his dream come true but he started the journey to this possibility in 1956 when he bought the 50 acres of Howletts for £6k he won on the horses. This stuff really lifts my spirits and my heart. When so much damage is being done to our natural world, there are these dedicated, good people doing this amazing work :) I think this film and Damien's words are just so moving and inspirational :) These 4 young, beautiful fit and healthy silverback males wild hopefully sire many more of their incredible species 'in the wild' where they belong. Many people ignorantly comment that zoos are wrong. I agree, most 'zoos' are abhorrent, but back in 1986 I fell in love with the ethos and the dream of the Aspinall wildlife sanctuaries, to successfully breed and then reintroduce endangered species back into the wild when and where it is safe to do so. Bloody marvelous :)
