industry shrouded in mist
Stuart Millar and Will Woodward
For wildlife enthusiasts, Uganda’s densely forested mountain region has an almost religious significance. One of the world’s richest ecosystems, it is also the last place on earth where visitors can catch a glimpse of mountain gorillas in their natural habitat.
But as travel companies began cancelling all trips to the area this week after the kidnapping and killing of eight tourists, the future of the animals and the country’s tourist economy were placed in serious doubt.
Fewer than 650 mountain gorillas survive today. About half live in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where civil wars and their aftermath have closed the tourism industry. As a result, the demand for gorilla-trekking trips to Uganda is insatiable.
Thousands of tourists make the pilgrimage each year to the remote Bwindi ”impenetrable” forest in south-western Uganda on the borders with Congo and Rwanda. Inside its 331km2, the thick vegetation boasts 120 species of mammal and more than 340 species of bird, but it is the 320 mountain gorillas who provide the main draw.
The animals were brought to the world’s attention in the film Gorillas in the Mist. It told the story of Dian Fossey, the naturalist who worked with the creatures for 13 years in the Virungas, a chain of extinct volcanoes 80km away on the Congo/Rwanda border until she was murdered, probably by a poacher, in 1985.
The numbers visiting the gorillas are so great that strict controls have been introduced making it illegal to venture into the forest without a trekking permit. With only 16 issued a day, the success of a visit hangs on the availability of a permit: some travel companies have been forced to rearrange entire trips because they failed to obtain enough permits and there have been rumours of them changing hands on the black market for about R6 000 each.
”Trekking the mountain gorilla can be a life- changing experience,” said Ian Redmond, a naturalist and wildlife consultant who has been studying the gorillas since 1976. ”The opportunity to be in the presence of a family of gorillas just going about their life in the forest relatively untouched by what humans are doing in the world is the greatest of privileges. When you are in the forest, with or without gorillas, it is a place of great peace and serenity, which makes it even more appalling when the effects of civil war spill over the border.”
Redmond, who worked with Fossey, added: ”There was no way this sort of tragedy could have been foreseen but I fear that the impact on the gorillas will be great.”
Until this week’s killings, the tourists and the gorillas had enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship: in return for a brief but coveted sighting of the animals, the visitors provided the revenue to maintain the impressive conservation programmes to protect the gorillas and their habitat from poachers and other human encroachment.
More than 70% of the Ugandan Wildlife Authority’s total income is generated by the gorillas. That relationship may now be destroyed, and the effects could be catastrophic. Since 1992, two dozen gorillas have been killed by poachers or soldiers.
Jillian Miller, director of the London-based Diane Fossey Fund, said the tragedy could have set the gorilla tourism industry back at least six years. ”The research shows that this is a healthy gorilla community with good breeding figures. But now their habitat could be in danger because a lot of the money from tourism went to the local communities so they didn’t have to turn to the forest for resources.”
Some observers believe the kidnapping may have been an attempt to wreck Uganda’s tourism-dependent economy.
Redmond was due to lead a party of tourists into Bwindi later this month. But, in the wake of the killings, the travel company, Animal Watch, cancelled the trip on his advice.
Tour company Abercrombie and Kent owned one of the camps that was raided by the interahamwe rebels. It closed the camp this week and pulled out its 10 staff.
”We have never ever had any problems like this in Uganda before,” said a representative. ”The area is so magnificent, completely idyllic, that it is difficult to believe that something as terrible as this could have happened.”