Oumbie

Western lowland gorillas face extinction in the wild, with fewer than 100,000 left across their African range. Oumbie represents one of the captive-born males helping to maintain genetic diversity in European zoo populations. His parents, Mouila and Bitam, produced him at Howletts Wild Animal Park in the summer of 1992.

His early years were spent at Howletts before moving to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in 1997. The transfer came when he was just five years old, still developing under his mother’s care. Port Lympne became his home for over a decade, spanning his crucial adolescent years.

September 2009 marked his final move to Twycross Zoo, where he has lived for more than fourteen years. At thirty-one, he has experienced life across three different facilities within the same conservation network. His subspecies carries the IUCN classification of Critically Endangered, making every captive-born gorilla like him valuable for long-term species survival.