Lulingu, a Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), was reintroduced to Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2024. In May 2026, Lulingu gave birth to a new baby, bringing hope for the species and excitement for the conservationists working there. “The baby and the mother are doing perfectly well. It really makes us happy. We are proud of her, it is also a bit of our success. Imagine, we knew her as a baby, we watched her grow, be rehabilitated and now she is a mother,” Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke, country director of the DRC Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE), told Mongabay by phone. Lulingu arrived at GRACE, a 16-hectare (40-acre) wildlife sanctuary, in 2016 when she was 18 months old. She was rescued from an illegal wildlife trafficking network by the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) and the NGO Gorilla Doctors. The sanctuary gave her space to socialize and play in a setting close to her natural habitat, under the watchful eyes of adoptive gorilla mothers. Lulingu was later reintroduced into the wild near Mount Tshiaberimu, a remote part of Virunga National Park. “The purpose of our sanctuary is to take in rescued gorillas, but also to care for them until they can be released into the wild. The fact that Lulingu has had a baby is a sign that she has adapted well to life in the wild,” Kabuyaya Mbeke explained. “By reintroducing them into the wild, we also hope to repopulate forests that have been…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Scientists have described a species of tiger cat that was previously unknown to science. From Bolivia’s Yungas cloud forests, it is the first discovery of a living novel cat species in more than 100 years. The tilcayo (Leopardus tilcayo) takes its species name from the name locals already had for it. Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a National Geographic explorer who discovered the species and co-author of the Current Biology paper that describes it, said the name honors traditional knowledge in the region. The tilcayo is smaller than a domestic cat at 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds). It has rounded ears, a slender body and a coat with large spots. “I have the honor of naming a cat, and that’s a really big thing,” Nogales-Ascarrunz, who is also a researcher at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, told Mongabay by phone. Photo © Fernando Faciole/National Geographic. For decades, researchers lumped small spotted cats across South America under a single species name: Leopardus tigrinus or tiger cat. However, evidence had been mounting for years that the group might contain several species. In the article published on Sept. 17, researchers unwound the species’ genetic web and confirmed at least four distinct species. Many newly recognized small cat species result from this kind of taxonomic reshuffling:  Researchers find a subspecies is actually a distinct species; or two different species that had been lumped together are separated. But the tilcayo was different. Researchers knew a cat occurred in the Yungas cloud forests, but it…This article was originally published on Mongabay