Residents and mountain gorilla’s habitat have greatly reduced- Uganda Wildlife Safaris
While on your Gorilla tracking safari to Uganda, Rushaga is a gateway to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, it is well-visited by foreign tourists who flock there for a Uganda gorilla safari/ Uganda safari tour to track rare mountain gorillas.
The park is home to 400 of the last 880 mountain gorillas on Earth. The Rushaga sector hosts 64 of these animals including the Nshongi Group and Mishaya Group, one of Uganda’s biggest gorilla families habituated to tourists.
Many locals in South western district in Uganda (Rushaga area), love eating bananas and owned banana plantations in the past. But now visit the area and you will not find a single banana plant growing there. The residents don’t even have plans for growing them again in the future.
They claim that It would be of no use to plant them because elephants and gorillas from Bwindi National Park eat them before they are ready for humans to enjoy them.
This conflict between the needs of people and animals has caused poverty, deforestation and climatic change.
Mountain gorillas trying to balance their diet is causing shortage of food to the residents.
Residents who have lived in this area for over four decades, believe that the frequency of these mammals moving from the park to invade gardens in neighbouring communities has more than tripled in the last decade.
Climate change is a key factor causing this competition. As the globe continues to warm up, it destroys resources within the forests like Bwindi. Due to this factor, mountain gorillas are likely to go out of the forest area to look for food outside in the people’s farms, and also the neighbouring communities are likely to go in the forests to look for resources.
What should be done, instead of reducing the forest cover in the park, the communities that co-exist with Bwindi Impenetrable National Park should look for alternative livelihoods.
For more gorilla information, contact Uganda safari/ Rwanda safari.
