Conservationists Urge World to Help Protect Gorillas
12/14/97
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Headline: Conservationists Urge World to Help Protect Gorillas
Source: Reuters
Date: 12/14/97
Author: Manoah Esipisu
Copyright: Reuters Limited 1997
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Wildlife conservationists meeting in Uganda on Friday
urged the world community to step up funding for the protection of rare
mountain gorillas, whose survival is threatened by conflict in central
Africa.
Conservationists told Reuters in the capital Kampala that there were now a
maximum of 600 gorillas alive in the region, and there was no accurate
information on their health in the bush.
They said a few gorillas had been killed, mainly by accident, inside the
Virungas park in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past few months.
But they said security was a concern, with ethnic conflict in Rwanda and
political upheaval in Congo meaning that the governments there were too
weak to fund any project aimed at gorilla protection.
Rare mountain gorillas are only known to survive in the Bwindi park in
Uganda and the Virungas, a park shared amongst Uganda, Rwanda and Laurent
Kabila's Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Gorilla tourism now exists only in Uganda but has collapsed in Rwanda and
the former Zaire. Visits to Uganda's Bwindi park are sold out at least one
year in advance. Only six tourists are allowed into the Bwindi park per
hour at a cost of $170 per tourist.
"We must ask whether the gorillas can pay for their own upkeep. The answer
to that is 'No'. We must ask the global community to give more (cash) to
fund projects to protect the gorillas," Mark Stanley Price, director of
operations at the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), told Reuters.
AWF is part of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) that
also groups the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Flora and Fauna
International (FFI).
Price said that in Congo and in Rwanda, park staff could not enter the
parks and gorillas were surviving "by sheer good fortune". He said it was
left to international agencies to find ways to monitor the primates.
The conservationists have just ended a week of talks aimed at establishing
a standardised approach of solving gorilla problems. They said they had
made progress in all key areas.
They listed landmines and shelling, agricultural expansion, utilisation of
paths in the forest for human travel, fires set by humans within the forest
and poaching of antelopes, buffaloes and gorillas as major illegal
activities inside the Virungas.
They said they were working to curb all these problems, and were also
seeking to promote community participation in park management, and to
launch revenue sharing and conservation education so that awareness among
local inhabitants improves.
Veterinary scientists at the workshop expressed concern that disease
sharing between gorillas and humans was very high and said tourists were
being advised to keep their distance from gorillas during park visits.
Mountain gorillas first came to global attention in 1925 when King Albert
of Belgium set up the Albert National Park in the Virungas.
The Hollywood film "Gorillas in the Mist", based on the life of scientist
Dian Fossey who dedicated much of her life to studying the creatures,
catapulted the animals to international stardom.