From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--

New gorilla family ready to visit in Uganda

KAMPALA, Uganda --Uganda Wildlife Authority tourism manager Lilian
Ajarova on September 19 announced that a fourth family of mountain gorillas
living in the Bwindi Impenetr-able Forest National Park has nearly
completed two years of habituation to humans, and will soon be ready for
viewing.
This will boost Ugand-an gorilla tourism revenue by $50,000 a
month, Ajarova estimated. Uganda allows tourists to visit mountain
gorilla families only in escorted groups of six, and has been able to
accommodate only 18 visitors per day.
The extra gorilla viewing opportunities will be a boon to the UWA,
which derives 70% of its budget from tourism, and about 75% of that from
gorilla-watchers. But introducing the fourth gorilla family to tourists
was delayed for about a month while an American veterinary team treated the
gorillas for scabies, UWA director Robbie Robinson said.
Global concern about the risk of disease transmission among humans
and great apes was raised in September by the publication of an article in
the journal Science about an outbreak of measles several years ago that
killed six gorillas in Rwanda. The International Journal of Primatology
simultaneously reported on an outbreak of a human form of pneumonia that
killed eight chimpanzees at Gombe Park in Tanzania.
Also simultaneously, the British Royal Society hosted a conference
in London to discuss the means by which AIDS spread from chimps to humans
probably 40 to 50 years ago.
"There is no doubt that AIDS is devastating and has already killed
millions," Liver-pool University primatologist Robin Dunbar told London
Observer science editor Robin McKie. "Yet it does not threaten Homo
sapiens with extinction. By contrast, illnesses like flu, pneumonia,
and measles, which we pass on to chimps, gorillas, and other apes,
threaten to tip some populations into oblivion."
Previous Ugandan efforts to increase ecotourism have been
repeatedly disrupted by violence spilling into the Bwinti Impenetrable
Forest from neighboring Rwanda. Bwindi was occupied by Rwandan troops and
refugees in both 1990 and 1994; four tourists and seven Congolese guides
were kidnapped in August 1998, among whom three of the four tourists are
still missing and presumed dead; and in March 1999 a raiding Hutu tribal
militia killed eight visitors plus four Ugandan wildlife guards. Another
24 visitors were kidnapped in that raid, but were later released.
Warfare still threatens mountain gorillas, of whom barely 400
remain, and may be an even more urgent threat to chimpanzees, Ugandan
Wildlife Education Centre consultant Wilhelm Moeller warned on September 7.
"Refugees don't leave their traditions and habits behind," Moeller
told the Kampala New Vision newspaper and the South Africa Press Agency.
"Eating bush meat is one of them. It has never happened before that
chimpanzees and gorillas are consumed in Uganda," Moeller said, "but a
lot of Congolese are in western Uganda, and many are not in refugee camps,
but in areas that are chimpanzee habitat. There is fear that poaching is
increasing as people hunt the primates and sell the meat to the refugees,
and we fear that the primate meat-eating habit might spread to Uganda."
Moeller spoke soon after two men found in possession of chimp meat
near the western Ugandan town of Kasese were imprisoned for 18 months
apiece.
An estimated 3,000 chimps and 400 mountain gorillas live in western
Uganda, along the Rwandan and Congolese borders.
On the Congolese side, Virunga National Park tourism officer
Jobogo Minindi told the mid-September International Rangers Federation
conference in Kruger National Park, south Africa, rebel guerillas are
using gorilla reserves and abandoned tourist lodges as base camps.
"Minindi told the conference, attended by 340 rangers from 54
countries, that his conservation staff had no control over the
distribution of firearms, and worked without electricity, radios,
helicopters, or backup against heavily armed rebels and soldiers, who
poach at will," reported Justin Arenstein of the African Eye News Service.
"Minindi braved bullets to attend the conference," said
International Fund for Animal Welfare campaigns coordinator Jason Bell.
IFAW paid the costs of attending for Minindi and 34 other rangers, from
African nations also including Ethiopia, Egypt, Guinea, Mozambique, and
Cameroon.