Gorillas In Their Midst

Is it possible to protect Rwanda’s mountain gorillas while also helping some of its poorest citizens?
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Across sub-Saharan Africa, women and children often hike miles to reach wells and families cope with a near-total absence of medical care. Even in remote areas, clinics and boreholes built by foreign groups with foreign money aim to relieve some of the most debilitating burdens of poverty. The improvements in Bisate are unusual because they are the result of work by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), an organization originally devoted to saving the endangered mountain gorillas in the forest, not assisting depressed villagers.

With its temperate mountain climate and fertile soil, the Virunga forest fringe is one of the more densely populated areas of Rwanda, which is the most densely populated country on the continent. The large families here—it is common for women to have seven or more kids—aggravate pressure on limited land. And for most people, farming is the only way to survive.

Less than 15 years after ‘Rwanda’ became a synonym for hell, tourism has joined coffee and tea production as one of the country’s major industries, bringing in $42.3 million in 2007, including $7 million for gorilla permits.
However, the mountain gorillas living in the forest distinguish this area from countless other rural regions. Attracting tourists and money to Rwanda, they are more valued—by the government, by NGOs, by the entire world—than the peasants living nearby. Indeed, efforts to preserve these surprisingly delicate animals force farmers into competition against them.