When I lived in Uganda, I often heard that tracking the endangered mountain gorilla was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a rare chance to see a profoundly beautiful—and nearly extinct—animal, remarkably similar to humans, in its natural environment. Still, I found the decision to go a difficult one to make. A permit to see the gorillas runs $500 per person, plus the cost of travel and accommodation. Nor are the gorillas particularly easy to reach. Located in only two regions in the world and spanning three countries—Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda and the Virunga volcanic mountains, which covers the corners of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—the gorillas live in dense forest at higher elevations. I had to ask myself if the mountain gorillas worth the great effort it would take to seem them.
Little was known about the mountain gorilla before Dian Fossey spent years studying them and the movie Gorillas in the Mist made them famous. When Fossey began her research in Rwanda in the late 1960s, she estimated there to be only 250 mountain gorillas left in existence. Now there are an estimated 700, with about half residing in Bwindi and the other half in the Virunga Mountains.
That number is still quite small when one considers the dangers that threaten their existence. As humans encroach on the gorilla’s space, habitat loss has now become a big concern for the continuation of their well being. They also live in an area that has been plagued by political and civil unrest over the past thirty years. For example, Uganda’s Amin regime was followed by Rwanda’s genocide, and current unrest in the DRC continues to put the gorillas’ lives at risk. As recently as July 2007, gunmen killed five mountain gorillas in the DRC’s Virunga National Park.
Despite the cost and the trouble it takes to see them, perhaps it is this single fact—their vulnerability—that makes mountain gorillas so worth seeing in their natural habitat. And so I decided to make the journey. We rented a car and made the long drive from Kampala, where we lived at the time, to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The 500-kilometer drive took us nearly 11 hours, the last 3 hours and 75 kilometers of which were on a dirt road that rattled our bones. The next two nights, we stayed at the Gorilla Resort, a lodge with six permanent tented rooms, nestled on the edge of the forest. We looked out onto densely forested mountains that rose above and felt a deep sense of solitude and quiet in this spot on the edge of the wild.
The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) issues 8 permits daily for each of the 4 groups of habituated gorillas that live in Bwindi (out of a total of 23 groups in the forest). These permits sell out long in advance. Mountain gorillas cohabitate in groups of, on average, 10 to 11 members. One mature male—grown males grow silver fur along their backs after the age of 10 to 12 and are called silverbacks—governs each group; he decides where the group will forage for food or nest for the night. He also protects the group from rival silverbacks or human dangers. A couple of blackbacks, or younger males, will accompany the group until they reach sexual maturity, then leave to find their own group to lead. The silverback in charge has 3 or 4 mature females who are bonded to him. The females usually have a few babies in tow.
However—and here’s the disturbing part—when the dominant silverback dies, the family must reform under a new silverback. This new leader will then kill all the infant offspring of the previous silverback so that the females will reproduce with and become dependant upon him.
A trip into an impenetrable forest is a daunting journey. A few hundred meters down the road from the Gorilla Resort, we passed through the gate into Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The sky suddenly disappeared under the thick covering of trees and tall hills. At the UWA office, we met Kenneth, our guide, and four other permit holders who filled out our group, along with a couple of assistant guides and a mass of porters. The porters would carry our packs and lunches and, if need be, literally push and pull us up the steep and slippery terrain if we grew too tired. The biggest worry about tracking mountain gorillas is the chance that you won’t find them, even after an 8-hour hike up a mountainside. There are no guarantees.
At the beginning of our hike, the road remained wide and smooth as we entered a farming community. The steep terrain tired us and Kenneth stopped often to rest and point out the plots of brilliant deep emerald tea plants that grew on the side of a hill in the sunshine,, or to tell us about the intricacies of human-gorilla conflicts.
Gorilla tourism began in the early 1980s. The International Gorilla Conservation Programme estimates that gorilla tourism alone generates annual revenues of $3 million among the 3 countries where the gorillas live. Add in the money generated from hotels, restaurants, and other services and that number more than quadruples. This indispensable income not only helps protect the endangered species but also ensures the livelihoods of the communities that surround the forests in which the mountain gorillas live. After the habituation process—which can take up to 2 years with the UWA spending hours each day getting the gorillas used to their human presence—the gorillas grow less fearful and even wander onto farmer’s fields to help themselves to a snack. To counter this problem, the UWA trains local villagers to protect their crops in ways that don’t harm the gorillas.
We moved off the main road and onto narrower paths that ran along the ridge of a high hill. We passed villagers who paused in their daily tasks to watch as our group filed by. Dark clouds gathered overhead and blocked the sun’s heat; an oppressive moisture filled the air. At 10:30 A.M., only an hour and a half after we had started our journey, we prepared ourselves to view the gorillas.
Early morning trackers, who keep an eye on the gorillas for their protection, had called in the animals’ location. We applied bug spray, left our packs with the porters, and carried with us only our cameras. The small dirt path through the undergrowth ended as we rounded a grove of trees.
Perched like statues and scattered across a densely foliated hillside were the dark and massive forms of the mountain gorillas. Seeing them in that instant was not unlike love at first sight. My stomach briefly fell and righted itself. The formidable silverback, the leader of the group, eyed us warily from where he sat in the shade of a tree and munched on branches that snapped easily in his grip. In another nearby tree, a female gorilla ate whatever was in reach while a 3-month-old adolescent climbed above her, sometimes dangling high above the ground by two hands before scrambling up on the branch again. The baby gorilla was lively and playful, especially when compared to the stoic adults.
Soon it began to rain, and our porters emerged from the edge of the copse of trees with our packs from where we could fish out our raingear. While we took cover under ponchos, the gorillas took cover in the bush; some disappeared for good while others merely nestled deeper next to the trees where we could still see them. One gorilla lay down under a low fern and seemed to go to sleep. The mountain gorillas have gentle, sad eyes and they seem apologetic about their size; they are remarkably graceful and their strength allows them to snap off bark and other vegetation with ease.
The rain did not abate, and so we spent the remaining hour watching the gorillas rest under cover from the storm. It would have been easy for me to feel unlucky because of the weather, which had made the gorillas inactive and more difficult to see, but I had to remind myself that these are wild animals. They are not here to cater to tourists or to perform on command—we were intruding on their space, in their home—or almost.
Finally, we left the gorillas and met up with our porters. On our way back, we passed a group of local inhabitants who were patiently waiting for us to finish our viewing so they could coax the gorillas off their farmland and back into the forest. The villagers wanted their bananas back.
For more information on the mountain gorilla, see:
The Bwindi-Impenetrable Great Ape Project
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~stanford/bigape.html
The African Wildlife Foundation
http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/mountaingorilla
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
www.gorillafund.org
The International Gorilla Conversation Programme
www.igcp.org
For information on Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and gorilla permits:
Uganda Wildlife Authority
Plot 7, Kira Road, Kamwokya, Kampala
+256 41 4355000
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.uwa.or.ug
