March 1999
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda
When eight tourists in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park were murdered in late February, reports of the brutality of the murders quickly spread around the world. What went unreported in this sensational and shocking incident are many details of the environmental conditions surrounding the murders. In particular the tourists and the bandits were both there because this region of Rwanda is one of the last refuges of deep forest in the area, and as such it is the last major refuge of the world's surviving mountain gorillas. Also present in the region are another set of important players in the gorillas' story: local villagers whose lives are closely intertwined with the fates of the park's gorillas.
News of the deaths of the eight tourists (two Americans, four Britons, and two New Zealanders) spread especially quickly because of the grisly way they were killed--hacked to death with machetes and axes by Hutu rebels from neighboring Rwanda. These rebels were among many Hutus who fled Rwanda in 1994 after a series of massacres in which Hutu ethnic extremists killed more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. The rebels killed the tourists to protest American and British support for the governments of Uganda and Rwanda. Following the tourists' deaths, 600 Ugandan and Rwandan troops chased down and killed those responsible for the killings.
Among the unreported victims of this story may be the people living in the area of Bwindi National Park and the park's small surviving population of rare mountain gorillas, the creatures the tourists had gone to the park to see. Uganda has one of the highest population densities in Africa, as high as 200 people per square kilometer in some areas. Most of these people subsist on small farms, but as the population continues to grow, new farmland is becoming more scarce every day. In this context, the gorillas of Bwindi National Park depend on their own fame for survival. American and European tourists pay hundreds of dollars to trek into the park and watch these peaceful animals. This income is an enormous source of wealth that both supports local residents and pays for the maintenance and guarding of the park. Without income from tourism, villagers would rely, as they have done traditionally, on clearing the forest for farming. With tourism, local residents have an incentive to help protect the gorillas' last refuge.
At the same time, the same remote mountain forests that shelter the gorillas provide refuge for a recent influx of political refugees, possibly 60,000 Rwandan Hutus involved in the 1994 Tutsi massacres. It was a small group of these Hutus who killed the tourists in early March. Still more alarming, this event was only one of many raids in the region recently. Villagers in Uganda, Congo, and Rwanda have suffered many similar massacres that have gone unreported outside the area.
Throughout most of their historic range, gorillas have been decimated by habitat loss and by poaching. Gorillas have long been hunted, like many primates in Africa, Asia, and South America, both for food and for sale to zoos in North America and in Europe. Today only 620 individuals remain, almost half of them in Bwindi. Although there has been relatively little poaching in recent years, eight gorillas were shot last year alone. Four of these were adults shot during the capture of one baby gorilla. These events may be related to the number of political refugees now living in the forests.
The notoriety of the recent tourist murders multiplies the risks for Uganda's mountain gorillas, and for the people living in the region. If the tourism economy collapses, villagers will become desperate and hungry. They will probably begin encroaching on the parks once again, and some may turn to poaching. With local people already living in poverty, it seems unlikely that they will be willing or able to put the needs of the last mountain gorillas ahead of the needs of their own families.
For further information, see these related web sites:
Report on gorillas' precarious fate, from the Johannesburg (South Africa) Mail and Guardian
Information from Kilimanjaro ecotourism company
To read more, see
Environmental Science, A Global Concern, Cunningham and Saigo, 5th ed.
Map of hunger in Africa: p. 215
Map of "megadiversity" regions: p. 272
Conservation and development in Zimbabwe--the CAMPFIRE program: p. 330
International wildlife preserves: pp. 333-34
Environmental Science, Enger and Smith, 6th ed.
Extinction and endangered species: pp. 211-17
Trade in endangered species: table 11.8, p. 212
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