A huge male silverback gorilla nibbles on a tasty bamboo shoot before farting loudly, oblivious to his neighbors — farmers working fertile fields a stone’s throw away.
With hundreds of mountain gorillas in residence, Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is a conservation triumph, but this resurgence is not without consequences, as the majestic creatures now struggle for space to grow and thrive.
Straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Virunga range includes eight volcanoes in the heart of Africa’s densely populated Great Lakes region and is — along with Uganda’s Bwindi Forest — the world’s only habitat for mountain gorillas.
Photo: AFP
Officials at the Rwandan park are proud of its success in regenerating the primate population.
“In the census we did in 2010, these mountain gorillas were 880; in 2015 we did another census that showed we have 1,063” in the Virunga massif and the Bwindi park, ranger Felicien Ntezimana told reporters before leading a hike into the mist-covered forest where the animals live.
Thanks to this revival, the mountain gorilla, known for its thick, shiny fur, is now listed as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, while other great apes remain “critically endangered.”
The animal has come a long way since the 1980s when decades of poaching caused its population to plunge to just 250 across the Virunga range, and American primatologist Dian Fossey was murdered in the Rwandan park, allegedly because of her efforts to combat poaching.
Stronger security measures and efforts to win over local villagers have helped turn the mountain gorillas’ fortunes around.
Today, 10 percent of the cost of each US$1,500 park ticket goes toward community projects, while 5 percent is allocated to a compensation fund for villagers.
Far from being hated and feared as they were, the gorillas are now seen as key to the community’s financial future, said Jean-Baptiste Ndeze, an elderly inhabitant of Musanze, a town bordering the park.
“Tourists throw money at them, which ... comes back to us in the form of food, shelter and good livelihood,” Ndeze told reporters.
While the tourism sector contributed US$25 million annually to Rwanda’s economy prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the park’s success in conservation has led to unforeseen consequences.
Twenty-five years ago, the Rwandan authorities were monitoring about 100 apes in the forest.
Today, about 380 gorillas call it home, an official count showed.
As a result of tourism and interaction with researchers, the primates are accustomed to humans and they are increasingly unafraid to venture into populated areas as their own habitat grows cramped.
“We have seen gorillas more frequently coming out of the park and looking for food outside ... also they tend to move further away from the edge of the park,” said Felix Ndagijimana, who heads the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda.
The results can be dire.
The powerfully built animal — an adult male can weigh up to 200kg — is vulnerable to human diseases such as influenza, pneumonia and Ebola.
Rising gorilla numbers have also raised the likelihood of fights between the primates, which can often prove fatal for the species’ youngest members.
After seeing population growth slow a decade ago, Ndagijimana and his colleagues carried out a study that showed a staggering fivefold increase in infanticides.
“Infanticides are a big problem, because it can have a huge negative impact in the gorillas’ population increase,” he told reporters.
The problem is much more pronounced in Rwanda than in neighboring countries. Only one gorilla family lives on the Ugandan side of the Virunga range, while the Congolese park is “huge” compared with the Rwandan forest, said Benjamin Mugabukomeye from the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, a regional organization.
In a bid to address the issue, Rwanda plans to extend its park, adding 23 percent to its area over the next decade.
The ambitious project is due to start next year and would displace about 4,000 farmer households.
“It’s a process we are undertaking very, very carefully,” park director Prosper Uwingeli told reporters, adding that officials were conducting feasibility studies and designing detailed relocation sites.
The authorities intend to compensate the displaced families and house them in newly constructed “model villages” — with a prototype already constructed in Musanze.
In addition to a huge school and a poultry farm, the village includes immaculate, fully furnished brick apartments — with the government insisting that the move would benefit displaced families.
They might have little choice but to comply with an authoritarian state and some families living on the edge of the park are worried.
“This place is very fertile and it has enabled me to feed my family,” a potato farmer told reporters.
The gorillas “are not a problem,” he said, but he complained that “where they want to relocate us, the soil is not as fertile.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS