Tour Companies Fight Over Ugandan Gorilla Permits. (22 October, 1996)

Kampala - Endangered mountain gorillas, whose plight was dramatised to the world in the film 'Gorillas in the Mist', have quietly become a money-making machine for Uganda and sparked a running battle between tour companies. Dian Fossey, whose life was profiled in 'Gorillas in the Mist', pioneered techniques for approaching gorillas and habituating them to human presence.

Today, tourists can trek with guides for a few hours into the forest and walk within metres of the gorillas who completely accept camera-clicking tourists. So exhilirating is the experience that demand for trekking permits vastly outstrips the supply set by park biologists.

At Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest there are 3 650 permits available for this year. Tour operators have requested five times that number. 'It's amazing. If we sold permits three years in advance, the tour operators would buy them all now,' said Elizabeth Macfie, a technical adviser to Uganda from the International Gorilla Conservation Programme. One solution is to raise prices above the present $150 a permit. Macfie believes the price could be easily doubled, and tour operators said they could sell out even at $500 a permit.

Permits have become virtually impossible to get unless booked months or years in advance. The shortage has been made worse by an unannounced decision by the Uganda Wildlife Authority to allow block sales of permits to companies. One well-heeled American safari company bought one-third of all the permits available this year. However, the fierce competition has led to better organised and well-financed international firms dominating the market to the disadvantage of Ugandan firms. Ugandan tour operators bitterly complain that their only option is to sell gorilla safaris to Virunga mountains, which straddle the Rwanda-Zaire border and a sliver of Uganda's Mgahinga Gorilla National Park.

The 1994 Rwandan war and continued insurrection by Hutu refugees have greatly dampened tourist interest, while in Zaire tourists are equally reluctant to bear the country's anarchy and the violence by the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees who surround the Virunga park. The tourism boom highlights a key business problem that also plagues many of Africa's national parks. Uganda has very little idea where its tourists go or what they spend, which means investment is being misdirected.

According to official figures, the number of tourists visiting Uganda rose from 58 054 in 1990 to 193 000 last year. But how to attract them, how much they are prepared to pay or how to motivate them to visit other attractions, is anyone's guess. Gorilla safaris are the hottest attraction in Uganda and have helped push up official tourism revenue figures 18 percent last year to $90-million, making it the fastest-growing industry in an economy that grew 10 percent last year. However, the $90-million figure is based on a survey that found people to spend about $35 to $40 a day in pocket money. Such figures are low because they ignore hotel bills or expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles needed to reach Ugandan parks. The Kampala Sheraton Hotel claims to be the second largest taxpayer in Uganda, yet it is not considered part of the tourism business.

Assuming the average Bwindi visitor pays $200 a day for a four-day gorilla safari, each of the fifteen habituated gorillas in the park brings Uganda just over R1-million a year. Independent Foreign Service. Courtesy of The Star.