hunted illegally for their skins and meat in Africa and captured to be sold to zoos. Also seen as a crop pest in western Africa because they sometimes eat from the native plantations and therefore destroy what would have otherwise been valuable crops.
The western lowland gorilla population in the wild is faced by a number of factors that threaten its extinction. Such factors include deforestation, farming, grazing, and the expanding human settlements that cause forest loss. There is a correlation between human intervention in the wild with the destruction of habitats and increase in bushmeat hunting.