News Flash: Gathering Evidence More Accurate Than Guessing

Another for the files of an unself-critical life: More than 100,000 rare gorillas found in Congo

An estimated 125,000 Western lowland gorillas are living in a swamp in equatorial Africa, researchers reported Tuesday, double the number of the endangered primates thought to survive worldwide.

"It's pretty astonishing," Hugo Rainey, one of the researchers who conducted the survey for the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, told CNN Tuesday.

The last census on the species, carried out during the 1980s, estimated that there were only 100,000 of the gorillas left worldwide. Since then, the researchers estimated, the numbers had been cut in half.

Hmmm...sounds like that "estimate" was pretty half-assed.

Actually, I take that back. That hysterical estimate probably led to the research money used to conduct the survey, which was also, probably, the entire point of it.

Once again, the ends are justifying the means.