After decades of snares, surgery and years out of sight, Lengui has been filmed in the wild with a newborn baby.

The western lowland gorilla, now in her 30s, was captured on camera cradling her baby in Congo after being rescued twice from snares earlier in life.

The Aspinall Foundation said the baby appeared to be about 1 week old and was thought to have been born on Valentine’s Day.

Lengui was orphaned in 1994 when she was 18 months old after her mother was caught in a hunter’s snare. She was tied to a stake and given fruit because she was too small to eat or sell as smoked meat, but there was a chance she could be sold alive.

A scout from Odzala National Park rescued her, and a week later she was transferred to Brazzaville Gorilla Orphanage, where she was rehabilitated and later returned to the wild.

In 2002, Lengui became trapped in another snare and lost her hand after the metal cable cut through to the bone. The wound became infected and vets amputated her arm below the elbow in what the charity described as a lifesaving operation.

The Aspinall Foundation said she was later cared for at the Brazzaville Gorilla Orphanage in Congo, where she was “loved and rehabilitated” before being reintroduced into the wild.

Tony King, The Aspinall Foundation’s reintroduction coordinator, said: “We’ve been waiting for this news for months, it seemed like an age until Elie finally sent the message we’d been waiting for.

“It’s wonderful news, and another chapter in Lengui’s remarkable life story.”

The charity said Lengui went on to quietly raise a daughter after the amputation and had been mostly out of the spotlight for about 20 years.

Mr King said: “She even disappeared completely for over four years.

“Shying away from contact with people, clearly understanding that we were responsible, to some extent or other, for amputating her hand.”

In late 2025, motion-sensor camera traps in the Lesio-Louna gorilla reserve captured Lengui looking heavily pregnant.

In April this year, gorilla researcher Elie Djoli Camara said Lengui had been filmed again on February 21, this time with a newborn baby.

The charity said motherhood “will not be easy” for Lengui because baby gorillas depend on their mothers for three to four years, and the average lifespan of a gorilla in the wild is 35 to 40 years.

Elie Djoli Camara said: “We just have to wait, month by month, for any snippets of information the camera traps can provide and then piece that information together, like a jigsaw, over time.”

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