Transcript

Gorillas and tourists

ALASTAIR MCNEILAGE

At the same time, another organisation was starting up, a gorilla tourism programme trying to find ways that the forest could generate income sustainably without being harvested, without being cut down, without killing animals. So that that provided income both to pay for the management of the park itself, pay for all the salaries of the rangers and the guides and the park staff and the maintenance of the forest, but also to generate income for the local communities.

FEMALE TOURIST

It's amazing. You never see anything like this.

NARRATOR

Now, gorilla tourism is seen as the answer to conservation. It's based on the simple economic principle that there is more money to be made from tourist dollars than from selling of natural resources.

MOSES MAPESA

We stopped timber companies or timber harvesting in Bwindi, and we earn a lot more money from the great apes tourism, from the gorilla tourism, than we would ever earn from timber production.

TUGUMISIRIZE YESE

We respect the gorilla because of tourism. It's a bigger income to our country. And what's also very wonderful about the gorilla tourism beginning is that the local communities' perceptions of conservation have changed significantly because they now see the gorillas as a sustainable source of income for them.

NARRATOR

Revenue from tourism trickles down to communities via job creation and extra trade, but there is also a scheme that puts a percentage of park entrance fees directly into the hands of local people.

ENOCK TURYAGYENDA

You know, there is some little money, which normally comes in the parishes every year. We call it revenue sharing. That money comes from UWA. It is the money, which these whites normally contribute to visit to this park to help the citizens who live around the park.

GHAD KANYANGYEYO

In the beginning, everything like wildlife to me it was useless, because there was nothing I was benefiting from them. Many local people were just taking anything as if it was nothing. And then they would chop the trees down. It would kill the animals and all, but now things have changed. Everybody is now putting pressure on conservation because we are benefiting from more life. Everybody is benefiting from tourism.

NARRATOR

Any long term plan needed to be profitable and offer sustainable livelihoods to local communities. Gorilla tourism has done this with some surprising results. In 2006, a census found a total of 340 gorillas in the park, an astonishing 12% increase in the population over the preceding decade.

MOSES MAPESA

We can begin to talk about a very positive trend in the conservation of Bwindi and the gorillas specifically. We have seen a steady rise in the gorilla population, and habitat is still large enough to accommodate a few more gorilla families.

NARRATOR

But is the integrated conservation and development approach supported by the money from tourism really sustainable? Is it the answer to saving the gorillas?

ALASTAIR MCNEILAGE

What doesn't always work as well, which perhaps is a bit unrealistic, is to think that through these ICD projects, you're going to improve people's livelihoods so much. I mean, you're talking about maybe helping people to move from being very poor to poor, but they're still poor. And so just because they may be able to cultivate more crops and raise some goats doesn't mean to say that they still don't have great needs, which could still be met by getting resources from the park.

JAMES BYAMUKAMA

You cannot be in charge of the minds of the people. The needs of the people keep changing day by day. And they are quite many people around here, for example, who still feel, even if you give them alternatives or substitutes for bushmeat, who still feel that bushmeat is what they need. What do we do with them? We still have to get back into the forest to trap. So I think Fortress Conservation and integrated conservation development approaches have to be combined. And the kind of management that brings about that is what we call adaptive management. You adapt the management according to the situation.