Gorillas
on Geri Skeen (Rwanda), 28/Jun/2011 09:46, 34 days ago
Not sure why I’m reluctant to write up our gorilla visit on this blog. Maybe because it was so extraordinary to be doing something I dreamed about since seeing David Attenborough do it all those years ago. The mountain gorillas are very well protected these days, at least on the Rwandan and Ugandan sides of the Virungas national park. There are six families which are habituated to tourists. Other families are observed by researchers. There is a stone boundary wall which keeps buffalo in the park and away from farmers’ fields. No-one is allowed inside the park without permission. During the day, park rangers keep track of the movement of gorilla families. At night, guards patrol along the outside of the wall. Locals who report poaching are rewarded. Locals whose crops are damaged by park animals are compensated. Locals are employed by the park as far as possible and a proportion of visitor fees is paid into the local community. Gorilla numbers are stable.Dian Fossey was opposed to tourists visiting the gorillas. Others disagreed, arguing that income from tourism was the only thing that would save gorillas from extinction. I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment, ‘In the Kingdom of Gorillas’ by Weber and Vedder, two researchers who were with Fossey and disagreed with her over this amongst other issues. There are now six families habituated to tourists, as I said, and eight visitor permits are allocated per day for each of these gorilla families. The eight visitors are taken as a group to their assigned gorilla family and get to spend an hour in their company. You are supposed to keep 7m from the gorillas.Here’s the walk in: We climbed steadily uphill for a couple of hours through bamboo forest:Saw buffalo dung and elephant foot prints. Finally reached the family of gorillas we’d set out to see, the Hirwa Group. And there they were. It was surreal. They completely ignored us. Here’s a young gorilla: And here’s the silverback:I have some video of him which I keep trying to upload here.  But as I keep failing, I'll publish this entry without it for now.After that, my camera battery packed up. I was grateful, actually, as I could then concentrate on being there. We watched the mother of twins a few months old grooming them, while the silverback groomed her. There was a second mother of a baby a few months old in the group too, plus some young gorillas. One climbed a branch which bent suddenly, causing it to fall off comically and roll along the ground. Rolling seemed to be the preferred mode of movement for the young ones, who followed the silverback in a series of forward rolls as he ambled off. The group finally made its way into a massive tree. It was amazing watching the silverback climb so gracefully and effortlessly. Just as it was time to go, a gorilla poohed on my head!I still find it hard to write or even think about, the experience was just so amazing. How fantastic that at least now the world’s remaining mountain gorillas have a good chance of permanent survival.Back at base I looked up at the Sabyinyo volcano again, knowing that on its slopes the Hirwe Group was calmly going about its business:By the next morning the cloud had lifted. Here are the slopes of Sabyinyo again:And of Karisimbi and Visoke, the volcanoes between which Dian Fossey lived: