An adult male gorilla arrived at Royal Burgers' Zoo from Warsaw Zoo on Monday, 12 May 2025. The silverback will be the new leader of the gorilla troop in Arnhem. On Monday morning, two female gorillas, in turn, departed from Burgers' Zoo to travel to the Polish capital. The introduction of the new gorilla male to the four remaining females in Gelderland will be built up gradually in the coming weeks.
Sadly, the Western gorilla is critically endangered in the wild. European zoos affiliated with the European zoo association EAZA have been coordinating a European population management programme (EEP) for this ape species for many years. This EEP is making excellent progress in European zoos thanks to intensive international cooperation.
To keep the European zoo population as genetically diverse as possible for the future, the coordinator carefully determines which animals are best suited to reproduce and which should use contraception due to previous breeding successes. Numerous gorillas have been born in Arnhem in recent years, so this is also being e
Thanks to mutual exchanges between zoos participating in the EEP, unrelated animals are introduced to each other to ensure genetic variation and establish new bloodlines within the population management programme to avoid over-representation of the genetic material of specific individual animals. The exchange of gorillas between Burgers' Zoo and Warsaw Zoo within the EEP is a good practical example of this.
