Satellite maps will ease plight of endangered mountain gorillas   Nyabitondore, a 12-year-old gorilla holds her twins in her arms Sunday, May 31, 2004 in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.The third ever recorded set of mountain gorilla twins were delivered in May 2004. Photo by Maryke Gray, IGCP.   A pair of Landsat satellite images have been used to identify land cover change occurring between 1987 and 2003 in the Virunga massif in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The changes seen are highlighted in coded colours: light blue shows non-forest to closed canopy forest - an example of new forest growth - while purple stands for the opposite, closed canopy forest to non-forest. Red corresponds to newly urbanised areas and yellow stands for other changes.   BEGo 1:50000 map of the Virunga massif, part of Virunga National Park World Heritage Site, including details of roads, bridges and settlements, topography and hydrology such as rivers and swamps as well as the park boundaries. Unlike all previous maps of the area it continues across national borders.   Female mountain gorilla called Mugeni, 15, and her five month old son, Bonane, in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park near the town of Bukavu , Democratic Republic of Congo, on Sunday, May 2, 2004.   Conservation workers recording gorilla nests. Positioning information gathered with handheld GPS devices during fieldwork can be inputted into the new BEGo geo-information system (GIS) software layers for later analysis.   New BEGo 1:50 000 scale map of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. This Park represents the rapidly dwindling Afro-montane forest ecosystem, considered to the rarest vegetation type on the African continent. It has a high diversity of endemic and rare species, not least half of the entire world population of approximately 700 mountain gorillas.   View of the crater of the extinct volcano Mount Bisoke in Rwanda, part of Volcanoes National Park.   A virtual 'overflight' of Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, based on the new Build Environment for Gorilla (BEGo) data products produced for the area. These include a digital elevation model (DEM) of the area, land cover map and base map, all of which will be used to enhance efforts to conserve mountain gorillas in the Park and its surroundings. These maps - plus the satellite imagery they are based on - are shown here draped over the DEM. Similar satellite-derived map products are being produced for other mountain gorilla habitats across Central Africa, several of them UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Release date: 8 June 2005