Hadari

Western lowland gorillas face extinction in the wild, with fewer than 100,000 left across their African range. Hadari represents one of the captive-born males helping maintain genetic diversity in managed populations across North America. His parents, Timu and Samson, produced him at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in the summer of 2009.

For nearly six years, he grew up within the Omaha troop before making the move to North Carolina in spring 2015. He was just five years old at the time of transfer — still a juvenile but approaching the age when young male gorillas begin asserting independence from their birth groups.

At the North Carolina Zoological Park, he has spent nearly a decade developing into adulthood. Male western lowland gorillas typically reach full maturity around age fifteen, gaining the distinctive silver-gray back coloring that marks their status. His subspecies carries the scientific name Gorilla gorilla gorilla and holds Critically Endangered status under IUCN classifications.

Now in his mid-teens, he has become an established member of the North Carolina gorilla community. Every captive-born western lowland gorilla contributes to conservation efforts for a species under severe pressure from habitat loss and hunting across equatorial Africa.