(Opposite) Female gorilla (Gorilla beringei) in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve, Uganda.
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve, Kabale District, Uganda, 2001
In 2001, I was invited to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve in southwestern Uganda to co-teach a short workshop for the wardens and technical staff of local protected areas. The purpose of the workshop was to provide some of the analytical tools necessary to facilitate a greater collaboration with local communities in the conservation and management of the parks. Our plan was to talk a little about ecology, ethnobotany, and resource management, go into the field to survey some of the plants that were important to local communities, run a few inventory transects, and assess the impacts—or lack of impacts—that the current rate of harvest was having on different resources.
The setting and complicated community resource-use situation made this workshop different from many of the others that I had given. Bwindi is not a large tract of forest with a low-density human population such as the ones I visited in Borneo and Amazonia. Rather, it is situated in one of the most densely populated areas of Uganda and is an island, rather than a sea, of forest surrounded by farmland. Agricultural fields stretch right up to the boundary of the park, and the distribution and abundance of many of the valuable forest species show the effects of decades of pit sawing and the uncontrolled harvest of trees for beer boats (carved wooden troughs used for brewing banana beer), firewood, building posts, and bean stakes.1 About half of all the mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei)2 in the world live in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
Harvesting by villagers in the Bwindi forest is tightly controlled and monitored by the park wardens, and it is a frequent point of contention between the rural communities and the conservation groups that fund and manage the park. Gorillas’ needs, the needs of the local farming communities, and the regeneration and growth requirements of the native flora all have to be respected to maintain the forest and achieve the long-term conservation objectives of the reserve. Through the discussions and field exercises, we hoped to find common ground during the workshop for the people, the plants, and the gorillas.
As we gathered outside for dinner after a lively discussion about the origin of economic plants, a couple of students started making comments about the food on their plates. The assertion that tomatoes came from Uganda was met by the rejoinder—from me—that tomatoes were originally from Central America. Another student chimed in that chickens came from Uganda; well, no, chickens come from jungle fowl native to Southeast Asia. But these delicious mangos are from Uganda, aren’t they? Nope, they are also native to the forests of Southeast Asia. At this point, the students were becoming a little frustrated and testy. Finally, one of the students asked, “Well, what does come from here?” My ethnobotanist colleague Tony Cunningham, who had organized the workshop and was an old hand in East Africa, thought for a moment, and then in a quiet voice said, “Human beings.”
Humans beings have occupied the Bwindi region for over 37,000 years. The first evidence of forest clearing dates back 4,800 years, when small populations of hunter-gatherers used fire to manipulate the vegetation. These groups hunted and harvested a variety of plant resources from the forest, casually planting the seeds of a few species in the ashes following the burn. The first wave of dedicated farmers arrived at the region about 2,000 years ago. The indigenous communities currently farming near the boundary of the park—and occasionally wild harvesting plants inside the park—have extensive knowledge about the plants and animals that occur in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Their cultural traditions reflect deep relationships with the forest and critical subsistence dependencies on local plant species; they have coexisted with gorillas for thousands of years. These relationships and dependencies do not disappear when local communities are denied access to the forest. As we repeatedly emphasized in our workshop, much could be learned by including local communities in a discussion about how best to manage and conserve the gorillas and the plants at Bwindi.
A small population of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) lives in the forest at Bwindi.3 A couple of times while running our inventory transects we passed through areas where a family of elephants had been feeding. African elephants eat several hundred kilograms of vegetation each day, and their feeding areas look like bombsites, as this one did. All the leaves had been stripped off the understory trees, pole-sized stems had been broken in half, and several of the larger trees had gashes where the bark had been ripped off and the trunk scraped by tusks. A couple of trees had been completely pushed over and uprooted, perhaps by one of the elephants accidentally backing into it. It must have been quite a meal.
Communities of Bachiga, an ethnic group from northern Rwanda and southern Uganda, settled near the park weave the stems of two herbaceous species, Eleusina indica and Plantago palmata,4 to make baskets. Both these plants are common in disturbed areas and along the side of the road, and in many countries they are considered weedy, invasive species that need to be controlled. But perceptions are different in a conservation area. At the time we conducted our workshop, the harvest of any type of plant material within the park was forbidden, and local weavers were prohibited from picking a handful of wiregrass to weave a millet basket.
One species of liana (Loesneriella apocynoides),5 known as omujega, is an important source of fiber for local weavers. The stems are extremely durable and resistant to rot and attack by wood-boring insects, and they can be dried and stored for years until they are needed. Because of these properties, omujega is harvested and used in large quantities to make granaries and ambulance stretchers, and for general basketry. The recent development of the tea industry around Bwindi has further increased the demand for omujega fiber to make baskets for harvesting tea. This climber, however, grows very slowly and occurs at low densities in the forest. We encountered only a couple of individuals in our transects, and all were sprouts from larger stems that had been harvested. The current situation of this species is tenuous. It is growing in a protected area, but that in itself does little to guarantee the plant’s continued existence.
Every type of resource use in the park, either by elephants or Bachiga weavers, creates a disturbance that has an impact on the composition and structure of the forest. The current forest at Bwindi was produced by hundreds of years of sporadic plant collection by local villagers and the daily foraging behavior of elephants. Prohibiting one type of use that might have a relatively minor ecological impact to meet certain conservation objectives while allowing a greater source of disturbance to continue for the same reason reflects a general misunderstanding of forest ecology. To conserve a forest in its current state and maintain a stable habitat for the gorillas, the original disturbance regimes that have created that forest must also be conserved. Restricting the traditional harvesting practices of local communities will change, not conserve, these patterns. Building a more obligate relationship between the resource users and the resource would seem to offer a better solution. Train the weavers and plant collectors and put them in charge of doing the resource inventories. Based on what they find, let them set—and enforce—the harvest quotas. These are the types of collaborative conservation alternatives that we were trying to address in our workshop.
After we finished the workshop, the park managers graciously allowed us to accompany a team of Batwa trackers who had been following a group of gorillas for several months. (The Batwa people are one of the last groups of pygmies in Uganda. They lived as hunter-gatherers in the Bwindi forest until they were forced out in 1964.) The trackers were working to gradually habituate the gorillas so that they could be observed and studied more closely by scientists. The trackers would look for signs of the band and wander around through the forest until they found the gorillas. After they found them, the trackers would spend a little time with the animals, stopping a considerable distance away but close enough for the gorillas to be aware of their presence. The trackers would return the next day and get a little closer. Again, they would do nothing but squat down in the forest for an hour or so and then quietly walk away. After the trackers had visited for a few weeks, the gorilla band would start to ignore them, even if the trackers squatted only two or three meters away from female gorillas with babies or a large silverback male. I appreciate the potential scientific benefits of habituation, but I question the logic of gradually training gorillas not to be afraid of the one thing that they should definitely fear—human beings.
After several hours of hiking with the Batwa trackers, we located the study band and were able to get uncomfortably close to them. The Batwa showed us how to squat down and make little grunting noises while we pretended to eat grass. We were told never to look up and make direct eye contact. I did exactly as I was told. On one hand, I could not believe I was so close to some of the most elusive, threatened, and noble creatures on earth. On the other, I was terrified. The gorillas moved around as they ate, and I tried my best to keep a tree between the silverback and myself.
How it happened I don’t know, but after a few minutes I noticed that I was positioned precariously with all of the females and the babies on one side of me and the silverback on the other. I was still squatting next to a tree, but in a frighteningly inconvenient place. I continued to grunt and pretend to eat grass. And then the silverback lunged in my direction, grazing the tree I was squatting next to with his shoulder, and took up a position next to one of the females, where he casually started to eat again. He probably had not even noticed me. I sure noticed him.
The development of community-based resource management activities at Bwindi would achieve several conservation objectives. Allowing villagers to continue traditional patterns of resource harvest in the forest, but on a sustained-yield basis as determined by inventory and growth data that they collected themselves, would promote forest conservation and reestablish a sense of forest stewardship in local communities. Having more people in the forest who support the conservation agenda of the park would also act as a deterrent to poaching and illegal harvesting. The greatest benefit, however, would be the maintenance, and ideally improvement, of quality forest habitat for mountain gorillas. The first step, at Bwindi as well as in many other protected areas in tropical forests, is greater involvement of the people who live along the perimeter of the park.