In the recent past, the governments of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have put in place a lot of measures to save the critically endangered mountain gorillas from extinction. Countless non-governmental organisations have also been set up to help in conservation around the Virunga Massif – the chain of eight volcanic mountains where these rare wildlife species live.

Mountain gorillas – which have helped greatly in boosting tourism in the region – are currently protected in four national parks: Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga Gorilla national parks in southwestern Uganda, Volcanoes National Park in northern Rwanda, as well as Virunga National Park in eastern DRC.

But even though mountain gorillas are among the most widely recognised and admired wild animals in the world, efforts to conserve these iconic apes, which are currently numbering about 1,000 individuals, have been curtailed by continued detrimental human activities, such as poaching, war and deforestation.

“Humans are the main threat to the survival of mountain gorillas because these apes are not targeted by any predators in the wild,” says Herbert Mugisha, founder of the Mgahinga Cultural and Craft Centre, a social enterprise based in Kisoro district, near Uganda’s Mgahinga National Park.

Mugisha points out that poachers pose the biggest threat to the survival of these majestic species, even though they never particularly target the mountain gorillas.

He says: “Poachers target mainly buffalos, which they kill for bushmeat, but sometimes their snares end up trapping mountain gorillas, and it’s hard to rescue them once they are trapped. Also, because humans share 98 per cent DNA with gorillas, it’s easy for the animals to contract diseases from poachers since, unlike authorized trekkers, poachers don’t follow any guidelines.”

In addition, as most of Uganda’s forest cover shrinks due to deforestation, now people living near national parks are increasingly encroaching on gorilla habitat to access resources such as bamboo, which they use for firewood, construction material, and to make things such as granaries and handcrafts. It is estimated that between 1990 and 2015, Uganda lost 107,000 hectares of forest cover per year, signifying an average loss of 3.3 per cent per year.

So, at a time when the crisis can still be averted, it is essential to take action that empowers the local community if conservationists are to achieve a safe haven for the mountain gorillas.

Social entrepreneurship  

Now some entrepreneurs are also joining forces with governments and NGOs to ramp up conservation efforts, and one such entrepreneur is Herbert Mugisha. Mugisha is using his Mgahinga Cultural and Craft Centre to empower local communities so that pressure on natural resources can be reduced. His organisation is applying commercial strategies to promote conservation and tourism while securing a sustainable livelihood for the communities around Mgahinga National Park.

His main goal is to reverse alarming trends in bamboo deforestation and poaching which, he hopes, will subsequently allow communities around Mgahinga National Park to do well by doing good. The idea is to show locals that they can earn a living from the very existence of the mountain gorillas.

Mugisha’s organisation is replacing the Rwerere Enterprise and Training Centre, which was previously run by the Bwindi-Mgahinga Conservation Trust. The centre was constructed by the Uganda Wildlife Authority with funding from the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration (GVTC).

To tackle the problem of poaching, Mugisha’s Mgahinga Cultural and Craft Centre is enlisting reformed poachers and equipping them with skills such as making wood carvings, bee-keeping, making crafts, blacksmithing, as well as making and packaging crisps and other types of food produced locally.

The centre currently has 28 reformed poachers under its auspices who are now earning a living by selling some of the products they make and also by demonstrating to tourists how they used to carry out poaching. And they also get paid for the latter.

“After training, we empower them to make their own products, which we sell to tourists at our crafts shop in Kisoro,” says Mugisha. “But we are also partnering with Red Rocks Cultural Centre in Rwanda and the National Theatre in Kampala and soon we’ll have our products displayed there as well.”

Cultural tourism is another area that Mugisha intends to promote so that locals can earn from hosting tourists in their homes. “We have developed a homestay programme whereby tourists to Mgahinga can stay in homes of the locals and get to learn about our way of life. They can participate in the day-to-day activities of the locals, such as cultivating the land, harvesting food from the garden, preparing local dishes, making tonto (local banana beer), milking the cows and even attending weddings and funerals,” Mugisha says.

Away from tourism, Mgahinga Cultural and Craft Centre is giving locals livestock as and also teaching them sustainable land management by empowering them to plant more bamboo trees, mostly in their homes, so that they stop encroaching on the Mgahinga forest. In fact, Mugisha says that every tourist who visits the centre – which sits on three acres of land – doesn’t leave without planting a bamboo tree. Bamboo trees are the biggest source of food for mountain gorillas.

“The communities around Mgahinga forest thought the forest was there to support them so even after it was gazetted, people continued to encroach on it by force because bamboo trees mean a lot to them – they use these trees to build houses and to make granaries, milking gourds and bean stocks, among many other things,” says Mugisha.