30/08/2014
Gorillas in bwindi impenetrable forest
Habituation of wild gorillas has long been a useful tool for research and conservation programs. Decisions to habituate gorillas typically reflect a balance of the benefits gained and the costs/risks. In general, the benefits include that it: generates revenue through tourism for governments, local communities, and businesses; enables detailed research on feeding ecology and social behavior; provides daily protection for the groups monitored; enables gorilla health monitoring; provides a mechanism for examining trends in population dynamics by monitoring births, death and dispersal patterns. In contrast, the costs of habituation are that it: increases risk of disease through exposure to humans in close proximity; increases risk of poaching due to loss of fear of humans; requires financial resources and staff to monitor habituated gorillas as a lifelong commitment. Both the costs and benefits can be illustrated in all locations where gorillas have been habituated. For example, several habituated Grauer’s gorillas were killed during the political instability in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Yamagiwa 2003) and evidence of a virus transmitted from humans was found in Virunga mountain gorillas suffering from respiratory disease (Palacios et al. 2011). The economic benefits derived from gorilla tourism can be large, but may come to a halt due to political instability, which is the current situation in Dzanga-Sangha National Park, Central African Republic.
Conservation and research efforts in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, which contains about half of the remaining mountain gorillas in the world, did not begin in earnest until the early 1990s following it being gazetted as a national park in 1991. This is in contrast to the mountain gorillas of the Virunga Massif, which have been the focus of intense efforts since the last 1960s. Over the past two decades Bwindi Impenetrable National Park has experienced many changes, notably an increase in the number of habituated groups from 3 to 12, which we describe here. Among the many conservation strategies that have been developed by Opens external link in new window Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), gorilla tourism was at the top of the list for generating funds for conservation activities and also creating alternative sources of income for local communities, a move intended to create a win-win situation for conservation and development. Overall, gorilla habituation in Bwindi can be viewed as occurring in three phases.
