UGANDA’S TOP TOURIST attraction — the mountain gorilla — presents the country with a contradiction of sorts. It boasts the largest population of the rare primates in the world, but earns less revenue from gorilla tracking than southern neighbour Rwanda.

Tourists streaming in to see the gorilla account for 80 per cent of park fees even though the primates’ numbers remain relatively low.

Unfortunately, Uganda has fewer gorilla groups open to traffic, partly due to the few permits given. With seven groups open to visitors, Rwanda has up to 20,440 permits available annually compared with Uganda’s 11,680. 

This explains the recent efforts to increase the number of permits to 17,520, boosting potential earnings to $8.7 million annually, up from the current $5.8 million. 

“There is simply too much demand for gorilla permits, whereas research counsels against allowing more people to visit individual families. So we have opted to ‘develop’ more groups to accommodate demand,” Uganda Wildlife Authority spokesperson Lillian Nsubuga told The EastAfrican.

According to Ms Nsubuga, work to habituate two new groups — a lengthy process that gets wild gorillas used to human presence — began last March and all factors remaining equal, the families should be ready for human visits early next year. The new families are being developed in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park on Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

UWA adds that it expects a 50 per cent increase in permits for daily tracking from mid-2009 when it opens two new groups of the rare primates to visitors. Currently, only 32 permits are available daily, with only eight tourists allowed to track each of the existing four gorilla families.

Visits to what would have been Uganda’s own habituated gorilla family, the Nyakagezi group in Mgahinga national park that merges into Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, were suspended more than three years ago because the group migrates to Rwanda for prolonged periods at a time. Arrangements have now been made for Uganda to earn 50 per cent of revenue collected when tourists visit the group while in Rwanda. 

Sharing up to 92 per cent of its genes with humans, the mountain gorilla is considered man’s closest cousin in the wild and there is now a global effort to save the animals that number just over 700 spread over an area spanning Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC.

Research conducted in 2005 put the number in Uganda’s Bwindi, a stand-alone enclave for the primates in southwestern Uganda, at 340, making it the single largest population of the animals. Another 250 are estimated to roam in Rwanda’s Virunga ranges while a smaller number are to be found in the DRC where they often fall victim to poachers who kill them for trophies and food. 

Gorilla numbers across the region fell to an all-time low of 370 during the 1980s but renewed efforts at conservation by governments and international groups, coupled with their new status as a tourist attraction, has seen numbers recover to the current 720. Over the past decade, numbers in Bwindi have grown by 12 per cent on the back of improved protection from poachers. 

MEANWHILE, UWA SAYS Uganda had not seen significant benefits in form of diverted tourism traffic from Kenya following the post-election violence there because tourists tended to look at East Africa as a region. 

“We are all losers because while there have been some diversions by tourists who had not embarked on their trips before the violence erupted, there have been many more cancellations by tourists who regard the region as one destination,” Ms Nsubuga said. 

Ugandan tour operators also suffered additional losses when fuel prices more than doubled during the Kenyan unrest, pushing up the price of moving around tourists who were already in the country. There are, however, indications of a quick recovery as the number of enquiries had picked up, with individual agents reporting as many as 40 calls daily.

Just over 600,000 arrivals were recorded at entry points to Uganda during 2006 although only about 25 per cent visited protected areas. UWA estimates more that 200,000 visitors — mostly foreigners — visited national parks during 2007.

http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/Magazine/mag2101088.htm