Guerrillas vs. Gorillas

Hardy tourists risk terrorist attack to watch gorillas in the dangerous forests of Uganda.

In late June, when Adrian Tunnicliffe of Sheffield, England, hiked into the misty mountain morning in pursuit of endangered mountain gorillas, he was among the first tourists to return to the rugged Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in western Uganda since eight visitors were hacked to death March 1.

"I was quite nervous about coming," says Tunnicliffe, a property manager whose wife refused to accompany him on the trip. "I knew about the security but would have been happier if there were more factual information about it."

Tunnicliffe was accompanied by British tour-organizer Olive Green and four other members, all from Australia or New Zealand. Flanked by two Ugandan soldiers and a park ranger bearing AK-47s, the group trekked out of a small campground past a roofless hut that had been burned by the killers. The hut is the only remaining sign of the attack that derailed Uganda's fast-growing nature-tourism trade.

The gorillas, in their mountain home along the Uganda-Congo border, live on the fringe of a guerrilla war that has raged for one year. The killers of the eight British, American and New Zealand tourists were Hutus, members of the former Interahamwe militia of Rwanda who had slaughtered some 800,000 people -- mainly ethnic Tutsis -- in that country in 1994. Driven from Rwanda by a Tutsi army based in Uganda, the Hutus now fight on behalf of Congo ruler Laurent Kabila la. They hiked from the Congo border, less than four miles from the main tourist camp at Buhoma, and they captured tourists and rangers before dawn while most were still in their beds.

At the time, only two soldiers and 30 park rangers were stationed at Bwindi. Today the 180 machine-guntoting soldiers in and around the 128-square-mile forest make tourists here among the most heavily guarded in the world. Only a few soldiers walk through the jungle with tourists; most patrol park boundaries and keep 24-hour watch at campgrounds.

Still, tourists remain anxious. A third of Tunnicliffe's tour group succumbed to doubts and withdrew from the trip. Absolute Africa, which organized the 12-week Nairobi-to-CapeTown tour, made participants sign a waiver and noted it could not obtain commercial insurance for the visit.

"When the raid happened, we really feared that was the last nail in the coffin for tourism in Uganda," says Steven Kagoda, permanent secretary in the tourism ministry, who takes heart from the trickle of tourists who continue to come to Bwindi and the string of parks along Uganda's western border through which bands of rebels periodically raid. Permits to see the gorillas, sold by the Uganda Wildlife Authority for $250 each, were booked for up to three years in advance before the Bwindi attack. Now virtually every advance booking has been canceled and once-scarce permits are freely available.

Since the park reopened April 4, 200 visitors have visited, most of them backpackers and determined adventurers, but none on the lucrative organized tours that last year were able to command about $800 for two days of travel and three days in the park. "Uganda has lost 90 percent of its incoming tourists from overseas," says Mel Gormley, chairman of the Uganda Tour Operator's Association and director of the Mantana safari lodge at Bwindi. "In Uganda, tourism basically is gorilla tourism. My company has lost about 95 percent of its business.... I have lost $1.2 million and laid off 60 percent of my staff."

Although Uganda's economy grew at a robust 7.8 percent last year, the Bwindi attack has jolted investor Confidence beyond the tourism sector. "The effect of the tourist killings on local people has been tremendous," says Gormley. "Staff can't send their kids to schools. A lot of lodge owners are on the brink of bankruptcy. There is, of course, the risk of people whose standard of living has dropped may go back to the park to knock off an impala or a hippo to feed the family."

Indeed, crop stealing by the gorillas long has been a source of irritation for local people, but it was manageable as long as tourist money flowed into the area. To halt poaching and encourage support for conservation, 20 percent of park fees are shared with local communities, which benefit from road and school construction and much-needed employment.

Like thousands of tourists before them, Tunnicliffe's group tramped for about two hours up steep, muddy slopes through dense jungle to see a family of the rare gorillas. As tourists almost universally do, the group gushed in amazement at adult gorillas calmly feeding a few yards away, glancing with evident intelligence at their human visitors. As camera shutters clicked, a pair of babies rambunctiously wrestled and crashed through the tangled underbrush and a playful adolescent male bounded through the branches, at one point approaching so close that rangers had to hoot and wave their arms to drive him back.