Gorillas at the Crossroads: Poaching, Hardship, and Hope
As the loss of biodiversity continues to grow on our planet, one of the reasons for it keeps on getting overlooked:
The need for survival …
This is Paul.
Paul is one of the rangers who accompanied me on my search for an animal, that I’ve always wanted to see.
The mountain gorillas…
He lives with his wife and his three kids outside of Bwindi NP, one of the few locations where it is possible to observe mountain gorillas.
The story he told me, is the perfect example of why we often shouldn’t condemn local poachers.
My best photo from my mountain gorilla encounter:
In Uganda, families have to pay 70$ per kid every three months to be allowed to send them to school. This doesn't include transportation or accommodation. In their already daring struggle to survive, the families have to decide between giving their children a better education and buying enough food to not starve to death.
In the more remote regions of the country, many can’t afford to send their children to school. As a consequence, the children stay at home. They don’t get the education that they would need to reach higher earning jobs than their parents. So when they eventually have kids of their own, they can’t afford to send them to school either. It’s a spirale from which it is almost impossible to escape from without outside help.
For many generations, people in developing countries have found themselves in similar situations. High costs, be it school fees, food or water,… have kept them in poverty. Naturally, some of these people began looking for alternative sources of income, many of which are illegal. One of these alternatives is poaching:
Catching or hunting of exotic wildlife to sell it’s meat, fur or the complete animal as a pet… is something that is happening around the globe.
The IUCN, the WWF and the CITES convention all name poaching as one of the main reasons for the worldwide loss of biodiversity.
So what should we do about it?
This is where we come back to Paul.
According to Paul, he is the first man in his family in three generations, who does not have to poach to feed his family and pay for his children’s education.
In fact, he can afford to do achieve both objectives at the same time.
But how? How do you get a family of poachers away from poaching?
You give them an alternative, which is where the mountain gorillas come into play.
The presence of these giants is something I can’t describe. Their simplest movements give you an impression of their raw power and their gentle souls at the same time.
Compared to the mountain gorilla population in Rwanda, the one in Uganda lives in extremely dense forests. From a photographic point of view, that is a challenge and an opportunity at the same time.
The mountain gorillas have become a national treasure of Uganda and its neighbor, Rwanda. Their presence draws people from various countries to Uganda, eager for an encounter with these gentle giants. As tourists spend time in these regions, they also spend their money, benefiting the local economy.
From the pilots navigating tiny Cessnas to the vendors and lodge workers, to the rangers and guides accompanying you—many locals profit from the influx of tourists.
More jobs, higher incomes, better infrastructure, improved healthcare... the list of enhancements brought about by the gorillas is long and impactful.
However, it's important to note that while things have improved, they are still far from ideal.
Driving through the villages near the national park reveals the stark reality. The vast majority of homes lack running water. Electricity is scarce or non-existent, and discussing internet access is almost pointless. It remains a rural and remote area in a developing country, and glossing over the harsh realities on the ground does no good. But now, at least, the people here have something they lacked before:
A chance.
In the case of Paul, he seized the opportunity to become a ranger at Bwindi National Park, protecting the very forests where his ancestors once hunted. What was once a source of survival has now become a beacon of hope for the region.
It all comes down to a simple concept:
People that are forced to decide between caring for their loved ones and protecting the wildlife around them will always choose their families and themselves. This doesn’t forgive the international crime rings that are exploiting our nature for their own greed. But the vast majority of poachers was, and still is, locals trying to survive. Condemning this would mean refusing to acknowledge our own need for survival.
Luckily, stories like Paul’s show us that you often just have to give them an alternative way out of their predicament.
This story is only one of many examples illustrating a crucial point:
Protecting wildlife in their natural habitats invariably also means protecting the people who live in those regions. Moreover, the practice of removing animals from their natural environments and flying them across the world to confine them in small concrete zoo enclosures is fundamentally the wrong approach. True conservation respects both the wildlife and the local communities, offering sustainable solutions that benefit all parties involved.
Finding a middle ground - a future dilemma that’s already here
The coming years will bring a new challenge to the region. With more and more tourists booking tours to see these wonders of our planet, the impact they have on the region will increase as well; not just the rising amounts of money they spend, but the stress they put on the wildlife and its habitat too. Right now, the number of people getting to see the gorillas is strictly limited. Considering how slowly great apes reproduce, this also means that there isn’t much room for expanding this number.
Park authorities will have to find a balance between uncontrolled mass tourism and restricting the access to the gorillas for the rich. This choice also includes the decision between more money for the people of which they know that they need it, and the protection of the species which gave those people a chance in the first place.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much room to widen the habitat of the gorillas either. They can only live on these two very specific, small mountain chains (Bwindi and Virunga). As a consequence, increasing their numbers and habitat at the same time, isn’t an option. There are already voices theorizing that the recovered population of mountain gorillas will reach the capacity of their current habitat in the next years.
And since translocation isn’t an option, the very rarity of the species that has brought so much to the region, could be its undoing.
