Silverback

Award-winning wildlife cameraman, Vianet Djenguet (Planet Earth 3, Attenborough’s Life In Colour)
has been invited by a team of conservationists in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park to closely document
their effort to save the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla from extinction.
This is an opportunity of a lifetime for Vianet who has held a deep spiritual connection with gorillas
since he was a child.
With unprecedented access to film this ‘habituation’ process - in which the conservationists follow a
group of gorillas every day in order to get them used to humans - Vianet attempts to form a bond

with the family's notorious alpha-male, a 450lb silverback called Mpungwe. Once the silverback is
habituated, the family will be deemed safe for tourists to visit, providing vital revenue to fund the
care and protection of all the remaining eastern lowland gorillas, the largest primates on earth.
By living amongst this group of 23 gorillas, day-in, day-out, for 3 months, will Vianet and the team be
able to overcome this fiercely protective male gorilla, and succeed in their effort to protect these
incredibly threatened animals?
This project is more than a job for Vianet who was born and raised just over the border in
neighbouring Republic of the Congo. As such, Vianet has experienced first-hand the consequences of
political instability in his home country and understands the impact of war on a region’s wildlife.
Vianet is well aware of the threats the gorillas face: poaching, deforestation, human disease and
armed militia, still fighting in the aftermath of the conflicts that have raged for decades.
Therefore, it’s critical that the park’s gorilla conservation project also supports the local human
population. In other words, the gorillas must pay for their own survival by generating income to pay
for their own conservation, as well as funding initiatives that aim to lift the local communities out of
poverty.
Born in neighbouring Republic of the Congo, and with a specialist interest in gorillas, Vianet was the perfect choice to be invited to the Kahuzi-Biega National Park to document their vital conservation work.

However, with the DRC still suffering from the impacts of war, will this extremely personal journey for Vianet help to save the planet’s largest primate from extinction?