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Marking 2009 as the year of the Gorilla has intensified efforts to save the endangered specie

Kwita Izina is a cherished Rwandan tradition where newborn children are named. For five years, however, Rwanda has extended the naming tradition to gorillas as a way of improving its monitoring of individual gorillas and the groups they belong to. It is the government’s way of “raising awareness at the national and international level about the protection of the mountain gorillas and their habitat”.

The Kwita Izina has since become a major international tourist extravaganza, attracting hundreds of foreign tourists to revel in the colour, pomp, music and dance in celebration of the mountain gorilla, which is an endangered specie.

This year’s naming ceremony has been more emotional because this year has been declared the International Year of the Gorilla by the United Nations as a means of rallying the world to protect and conserve the only species that genetic analysis shows is 98.4% similar to humans.

At the ceremony, 18 baby gorillas were named in the country’s flagship gorilla conservation programme. The number of named gorillas is now 93.

The naming ceremony is arguably the most publicised conservation effort both within and outside Rwanda. Information from the country’s tourism office indicate the event has increased sensitisation and significantly reduced the number of illegal activities, including poaching and destruction of the gorillas natural habitat.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists mountain gorillas on its Red List of Threatened Species following a significant reduction in their population in the past 20-30 years. IUCN suspects this reduction will continue for the next 30-40 years. Based on its assessment, the maximum population reduction over a three-generation (i.e. 60 year) period from the 1970s to 2030 is suspected to exceed 50%, which qualifies this species as endangered.

That gorillas are the only creatures in the animal kingdom that share a close kinship to humans is not the only reason they should be conserved. The Executive Director United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), one of the organisations that initiated the year of the gorilla, Achim Steiner, while speaking at a related event in London early in the year noted that conserving gorillas also conserves “a rich array of forest biodiversity upon which many people depend; biodiversity too that may hold the clue to breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals and improved crops to new kinds of smart materials and processes that will be urgently needed for a sustainable 21st  century.”

Gorillas have also been known to play a crucial role in maintaining the tropical rainforests in regions of their habitation, which remain important in balancing the world’s climate. Some conservationists have claimed the future of these forests depends on gorillas who plant the seeds for the next generation of trees. What’s more, Rwanda and Uganda continue to generate huge revenues from gorilla visits.

Sam Mwanda, the director of conservation with Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), estimates that UWA collected approximately Shs 6bn (US$27 million) last financial year from gorilla tracking permits.

In Rwanda, gorilla tourism alone is said to have earned the country $7 million.   

Various organisations involved in gorilla conservation such as UNEP, the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), the Jane Goodall Institute, UNEP/UNESCO’s Great Ape Survival Partnership (GRASP) and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) record threats to the survival of gorillas. Some are general and others unique to each gorilla range states.

In the DR Congo, for instance, there are enormous levels of game hunting with estimates of between one and five million tonnes of wild animal meat extracted per year from the Congo Basin alone. These organisations have recorded high cases of gorillas hunted for the bush meat trade, live specimen and some gorilla body parts for use in traditional medicine.

They say that since capturing one live gorilla infant leaves at least two adults dead, and four out of five infants die before reaching skilled care, to procure one live infant, 14 gorillas are likely to have died.

The future prospects for gorillas are made particularly grimmer as they reproduce slowly.

The Congo gorillas have also been threatened by the country’s unending conflicts where they have been targeted as game and their habitats swarmed with people trying to escape the conflicts.

In Uganda, Mwanda says, the major threat to gorillas is perhaps diseases they acquire when they leave their habitations to venture into areas where human beings live. Gorillas are easily susceptible to them. Thus, as one of the ways of conserving gorillas, they are working with communities around the Bwindi and Mgahinga parks to create health awareness including proper disposal of waste.

Sam Nsingwire, country programme manager for the Gorilla Organisation, one of the many organisations locally supporting the conservation of gorillas, adds that Ugandan gorillas are also threatened by people’s encroaching and destroying their habitat. “People neighbouring the parks are some of the poorest in Uganda, living in highly degraded areas with depleted soils and high levels of soil erosion. They are therefore forced to encroach on the parks which have better soils, and for wood, wild honey and many other things. So, there is no way you cannot conserve gorillas without involving the community.”

As such, the Gorilla Organisation in Uganda has concentrated on community conservation. They support people surrounding gorilla habitations replenish their degraded resources. “One way is through encouraging organic farming by improving soils through the use of natural elements such as animal dung and urine,” noted Nsingwire. They also train local residents improved bee keeping methods, supply them with modern beehives as well as goats as substitutes to deter them from encroaching on forests. “We’re improving people’s livelihoods but also indirectly protecting the gorillas.”

Indeed community-driven conservation underlies the Year of the Gorilla campaign where the focus has been pitched mainly on protecting the forest habitat and finding alternative livelihoods for people who depend on these habitats for income, fuel, food and medicine. Mwanda says UWA is involved in the same, providing water sources, schools and community halls to support education and awareness, and supporting poultry and piggery projects that people have identified themselves as alternatives to the forests. UWA also decided to reserve $5 (about Shs 10,750) from each permit to be used by parishes in the Mgahinga and Bwindi areas to support various activities geared towards supporting local residents and deterring them from encroaching forest habitats.

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