Binyindo may not be the handsomest of all silverbacks in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, but he’s certainly one of the best known
Sporting a wonky nose, the result of a long-ago altercation with another adult male gorilla, he
now leads a family of nine, all of them well known to the park’s rangers. They are also increasingly well-known to the tourists who visit the park hoping to spend an hour in the company of wild gorillas.
The Gorilla Organization’s Tuver Wundi went to meet with one of the guides looking after the Binyido group, Lameck Monday. He’s been working in the park for ten years and has seen first-hand how tourism has helped transform the lives of the communities living alongside the gorilla forests.
With 20% of all tourist revenues redistributed locally, and thanks to projects such as the Gorilla Organization’s long-standing community conservation programmes, the people of the Bwindi region have less reason to trespass into the park to poach or collect firewood.
For the Binyido family and the 450 other mountain gorillas living here, that means the chance to live and thrive in peace.
This story was originally published in the Summer 2023 edition of Digit News. Read the full newsletter here.