East African Business Week (Kampala)
Geoffrey Baluku
7 April 2008
Kampala — Out of the estimated 720 mountain gorillas left in the world, 340 can be found in the jungles of Bwindi Forest National Park that has over 32 families. A family of gorillas is made up of between 10 and 30 members that include one or two Silverbacks and several juvenile/ Blackbacks.
Of the 32 groups, only 4 have so far been habituated for tourism purposes though 2 other groups are likely to be open for tourism by the end of this year. The selling of gorilla permits has since the early 1990's been the sole responsibility of Uganda Wild Life Authority (UWA) as mandated by act of parliament.
However, recently UWA decided to privatize one of the habituated groups i.e the Nkuringo family of gorillas. With effect from August 08, the buying of Nkuringo permits will be done through the Uganda Safari Company owned by Jonathan Wright. Which to me was not fair given the competitiveness and scarcity of the permits. Under no circumstances should permits be sold and certainly owning a lodge should not be a reason for 6 of the 8 permits to be sold to an individual
At a recent stakeholders meeting convened by UWA at Hotel Equatoria, I asked the Executive Director " UWA to throw more light on this concession and having had no clear answer at the time, promised call another meeting that till now has never taken place.
Its sad that now we are fast loosing hold of the stakes and worse still, the concession agreement has already been signed between UWA/NCDF & the Uganda Safari Company. If this trend of events is not stopped soon, this scramble for our natural resources will have all National parks privatised.
The implication of this move is that businesses like Internet Cafes, Restaurants/Hoteliers such as Heritage Lodge, Kisoro Travelers Rest Hotel and craft sellers will lose out on business. This endangers the gorillas, as locals will not see any point in protecting the gorillas they are not benefiting from.
Besides, the whole industry will be affected given that budget travellers cannot afford the kind of fees lodges owned by these individuals charge while, the high-end travellers (who are few in number) may afford it. So far these lodges charge USD450 per person per night with a further condition that a minimum of two nights has to be booked.
This means that a single client will spend $900 on accommodation plus an extra $500 on the permit. This however, does not include transport, administrative costs and government tax. If this is not robbery then what is it?
Do not be surprised when tour operators opt to go in for Rwanda gorilla permits other than promote their own country's. I suggest this agreement be cancelled and UWA takes on its responsibility of selling all gorilla permits so that locals of Kisoro/ Kanungu and the other surrounding areas do not miss out on the benefits.
The writer is the manager African Pearl Safaris Kampala Uganda
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