The Gorilla Foundation

Education: (Projects KokoApp and KokoKids)a)Our Koko Signs app, developed with ArcTouch.com, and released to the public in Dec. 2023, recently (Nov. 2024) won a prestigious Anthem App Award, in the category of Sustainability, Environment and Climate. We have be regularly updating it, with the help of ArcTouch, and recently added an offline (downloadable video) version that makes it possible to use the app in areas where this is poor or no internet or cell connectivity, such as in sections of Africa that lie near gorilla habitats.b)As part of our KokoApp-based KokoKids outreach project, we have been sending conservation education materials to our partners in both Cameroon (near the critically endangered Cross-River Gorillas) and Uganda (near an endangered sub-population of Mountain Gorillas). The current materials are implemented in the context of the Koko Signs app, and delivered via both cell phones and computer tablets, which are now abundantly available in Africa and provide a new opportunity to share gorilla sign language and stories involving gorillas Koko and Michael that have the power to motivate hearts and minds to save the species.

Welfare: (Project KokoCares)a)In FYE2024 we were notified that we would have to terminate our lease for 71 acres of land on Maui, 30 years in to a 60 year lease, because of non-use. We had been considering the development of a gorilla sanctuary there for years, however, since Koko and Michael passed away (in 2019), we have been unsure of where the gorillas would come from, which made our new optimal design somewhat hypothetical. However, early 2024 we became aware of a need to build a similar sanctuary in a protected million-acre reserve Africa (Congo), to help rewild dozens of gorillas currently living in zoos in both the US and Europe. We are in the process of establishing a Memo of Understanding (MoU) to build a Gorilla Rewilding Adaptation Sanctuary (GRAS) and hope to be able to announce our partnership by January 2025.b)We also continue to visit gorilla Ndume at the Cincinnati Zoo twice per year to monitor his physical and mental states. He is getting older (just turned 43) design, and seems to be stressed by life in a zoo, despite his having a couple of female companions nearby. Our observations of Ndumes life at a zoo are helping to inform some of our design decisions for the African-based GRAS sanctuary described above.

Research: (Project: KokoArc)In FYE2024, we digitized nearly all of the Project Koko interspecies communication video archive approximately 300 more tapes, bringing it to a total of nearly 2000 hours of video.We also digitized about 50% of the Project Koko research diary archive (about 20,000 pages out of 40,000 pages).And we negotiated the beginning of an agreement with Stanford University Library to house the complete physical representatio of the Project Koko Archive.We continue to post at least one edited video, from the video archive, on social media and email this content within our weekly Koko Video eNewsletters, and include some of them within our Koko Signs app every quarter.Finally, we have begun exploring ways to apply AI to analyze both the video and diary archive, to find the locations where gorilla communication is taking place, and also to help us translate such communications for application to scientific understanding, social media education, and email marketing.