Save The Mountain Gorilla Initiative

Since the outbreak of the global pandemic between 2019 and 2020 in Uganda, it has not been business as usual in the country. About 252,144 people in the Kanungu District (Uganda), not only limited to the Batwa community, are currently facing an acute phase of food crisis due the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has left many people forced to stay home while others are unable to find paid employment.

Some parts of district have been described as chronically food insecure for the past years - this results in hunger, domestic violence and sexual harassment; young girls are forced to get married earlier and earlier in order to take pressure off families for resources.

Since the commencement of active gorilla tourism in 1992, frontline villages (Buhoma in particular) of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park have been entirely dependent on tourism. The outbreak of the pandemic caused temporary closure of all tourism-related businesses as per the guidelines of the President of the Republic of Uganda. With tourism halted, local people have extremely limited survival options - many have turned to encroaching on the park, its flora and fauna (even leading to the death of Rafiiki, a known mountain gorilla in the Southern sector of the park). The Ugandan government’s restrictions to control the spread of the coronavirus have created acute distress and food insecurity for the villagers living adjacent to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. 

The Batwa are among the most affected, as they have been entirely dependent on tourism for their livelihoods, providing dance shows as well as selling handicrafts. All this is gone now. Their desperation has put Bwindi animals, including gorillas, at great risk of poaching. Currently we are working to set up a skill center for Batwa community in Karehe Batwa Settlement.

After seeing the government’s gravely insufficient response to assist these communities, we at Joint Efforts for Green Mountain Initiative are taking a grassroots approach by requesting funding for agricultural inputs, including quick-harvest seeds, to support these affected homesteads both during and after the global crisis.

If these communities are not supported during this challenging time, we expect high risk to the park and its inhabitants, including the gorillas. People will be forced to depend on resource extraction from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park for livelihood, thereby derailing previous conservation efforts. The result of agricultural input aid will be sustenance for local people and protection for Bwindi wildlife able to survive in an intact forest ecosystem.