If warring factions and streams of refugees continue to leave them alone, Rwanda’s population of mountain gorillas may emerge unscathed from the country’s devastating civil war.
Being left alone does not, however, guarantee a future for the great apes of northwestern Rwanda, part of a population of some 300 mountain gorillas living high in the Virunga Mountains on the borders of Rwanda, Zaire and Uganda. These gorillas constitute half the world’s number of the endangered subspecies.
Rwanda’s apes must be seen by paying gorilla-watchers to be protected over the long term. According to conservationists, the only lasting hope for preservation is the resumption, as soon as possible, of Rwanda’s once-thriving ecotourism. Without tourists and the hard cash they bring, clearing and farming will inevitably destroy the gorillas’ forest home in Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans. Loss of habitat, rather than poaching, is the ultimate danger facing the animals, conservationists say.
With Rwanda still wracked by violence and national park personnel dead or scattered, opinions about when tourists might be back are only guesses. Observers are deeply concerned that whenever tourists do return, it will be too late.
“I cannot imagine that we could put tourism back into place, functioning, soon enough to forestall the obvious cry for farmland,” says Diana McMeeken, chief executive of the African Wildlife Foundation. She is not alone in her fears.
“I don’t have high hopes for long-term gorilla tourism,” says Craig Sholley, director of conservation and education for International Expeditions, who lived in Rwanda in the late ’80s as head of AWF’s Mountain Gorilla Project, “I am deeply concerned about what might happen in terms of the land in the park. There will be no rationalization for saving it if the money (from tourism) stops coming in.” Even a quick peace won’t solve the problem, Sholley says, “Then the problem becomes: How do you convince the world to go to Rwanda?”
The Washington, D.C.-based AWF developed the system to support the protection of gorillas with money spent by international wildlife-lovers, who paid park fees of as much as $190 for an hour with gorillas habituated to human visitors. At its peak in the late 1980s, the program netted at least $1 million in park fees. With spinoff revenues from such sources as hotels, restaurants, ground transportation and souvenir sales, tourism became a leading source of income and jobs in a desperately poor, overpopulated country.
AWF turned over its very successful system to the Rwandan government in 1990. Basically, the program was a commercial adaptation of the human-ape contacts pioneered by the legendary primate researcher Dian Fossey. Her book, “Gorillas in the Mist,” and the movie based on it helped make Rwanda’s mountain gorillas internationally famous. The AWF’s McMeeken and others say that ecotourism saved Rwanda’s gorillas by giving government and locals a compelling reason-money-not to destroy the apes’ forest home.
Rwanda’s program, hailed as a model of ecotourism, was copied by Zaire and Uganda. In spite of low-level civil warfare, gorilla-watching continued in Rwanda until intense nationwide fighting and massacres began in early April.
Visitorship in Zaire’s Virunga National Park, contiguous to Rwanda’s gorilla park, is sharply down, says Phil Ward, safari operations manager for Mantana African Safaris, a British firm that handles ground operations for several North American adventure travel companies’ gorilla trips. And Uganda has closed its small gorilla reserve on the Rwandan border.
With Rwanda cut off, and the situation uncertain everywhere in the Virunga Mountains, the best opportunity for watching mountain gorillas lies to the north in Uganda. That country’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is home of the other half of the world’s 600 surviving mountain gorillas. Bwindi, about 30 miles from the Rwandan border, has a new program of gorilla-watching based on the Rwandan model. Outfitters report a surge of interest in Bwindi by those who might otherwise have gone to Rwanda or Zaire.
While tourists focus on other groups of mountain gorillas, the International Gorilla Conservation Program, of which AWF is the lead organization, has been trying to assess the situation in Rwanda. Only about three weeks after he fled Rwanda, IGCP coordinator Jose Kalpers was at the Zaire-Rwanda border, in contact with a handful of park personnel who were still trying to keep a protective eye on the gorillas.
Kalpers reported that gorillas had not been harmed by the stream of refugees passing through the area. Nor were there any signs of poaching.
“It would be a real mistake,” says AWF’s McMeeken, “to underestimate the amount of devotion by the citizens (of Rwanda) to protecting the gorillas.”
Until the world’s wildlife-lovers come back to Rwanda to see gorillas, and pay for the privilege, the fate of the gorillas will rest in the hands of Rwandans.
GORILLA TRIP TOUR OPERATORS
In spite of the human catastrophe in the heart of mountain gorilla country, several American adventure travel companies continue to offer mountain gorilla encounters in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park or Zaire’s Virunga National Park. Contact:
Abercrombie & Kent, 1520 Kensington Rd., Oak Brook, Ill. 60521-2141; 800-323-7308 or 708-954-2944.
International Expeditions, 1 Environs Park, Helena, Ala. 35080; 800-633-4734 or 205-428-1700.
Mountain Travel/Sobek, 6420 Fairmount Ave., El Cerrito, Calif. 94530; 800-227-2384 or 510-527-8100.
Wilderness Travel, 801 Allston Way, Berkeley, Calif. 94710; 800-368-2794 or 510-548-0420.
