Gorilla Foundation

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.

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.