![]() ![]() Viewers routinely are fewer than twenty feet from them as the gorillas go about their business people often find this proximity a very emotional experience.Įcotourism is critical to the gorillas’ survival. Young gorillas often frolic together and are more likely to interact with their observers. ![]() The gorillas are comfortable with and generally seem to ignore the human beings observing them, and do not appear fearful or aggressive. Trackers locate and follow the habituated groups in the forest, return in the morning to the last place they had been seen the evening before, find their current location, and then inform the base camp, so that small groups of tourists can trek to observe them for an hour. Each member of these groups is named and studied over time. Gorillas live in family groups, each led/controlled by a dominant male, the “silverback.” As part of the ecotourism enterprise, since 1998 fifteen of these groups have been habituated to the presence of human beings. This can make the silverback a bit nervous. The young ones play, and sometimes approach the tourists, showing no fear. While the tourists observe the gorillas, there seems to be little interference with their normal life. Further, it was felt to be easier to keep the park free of poachers if entry required a permit. The Batwa did not hunt the mountain gorillas, calling them sacamunto – “just like me.” Occasionally, however, a mountain gorilla was caught in one of their hunting snares. But to protect the gorillas, the Batwa were forcibly evicted from that forest when it became a national park and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a decision made jointly by the United Nations and the Ugandan government. Mountain gorillas and the Batwa lived alongside one another in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest until 1992. But agriculturalists and pastoralists started clearing forests for cultivation in the nineteenth century, and colonialism-associated large-scale forest logging and trophy game hunting caused the overexploitation and destruction of forest habitats, which impacted both wildlife and Batwa Pygmy communities. Their sustainable, low-impact use of forest spanned thousands of years. There is evidence that the Batwa are one of the oldest races on earth. The small-statured, hunter/gatherer Twa have lived for millennia in the equatorial forests of central Africa, of which they are believed to be the original human inhabitants. Our tour leader stated that the Batwa were “happy” to now be living outside of the forest, but their demeanor and living circumstances indicated otherwise. ![]() They previously had been evicted from the forest to protect mountain gorillas. ![]() In 2006, a year after retiring as a veterinarian, my wife Claudia and I traveled to Africa for the first time, visiting Buhoma, a village in far southwest Uganda, at one of the entrances to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, where we trekked to see critically endangered mountain gorillas and where we first met some Batwa Pygmies. My intention is to describe an example of how the powerful abuse the powerless, intentionally, or by lack of consideration of the potential consequences of what they do a story repeated all over the world. Interviews & Essays by Tony Schwartz Mountain Gorilla Protection and the Batwa Pygmies of Buhoma, Uganda ![]()
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