Friend-a-gorilla Newsletter

Josephine Mayanja-Nkangi

Campaign a Success

As part of the 2009 Year of the Gorilla conservation efforts, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) spearheaded the Friend-a-Gorilla campaign, to provide an opportunity for the world to play an active role in the conservation of the Mountain gorillas of Uganda by ‘friending’ any of our habituated gorillas. In the interview, Josephine Mayanja-Nkangi, the Friend a Gorilla Campaign Coordinator talks about the progress and challenges of the campaign so far.

In September, 2009, UWA launched a Friend a Gorilla campaign as a means of involving the whole world in its mountain gorilla conservation drive. Is the campaign on the right course?

In spite of a few technical challenges here and there, we are definitely on course.

What are the major objectives of the campaign and to what extent have they been realized?

The major objectives of the campaign were to:

• raise awareness about the need for mountain gorilla conservation;
• raise funds for mountain gorilla conservation;
• highlight Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) as a world heritage site and
• raise the profile of Uganda as a prime tourism destination.

To meet these objectives, we created the Friend-a-Gorilla campaign whose premise was to raise awareness while raising funds for conservation a dollar at a time. The primary vehicle for the FG campaign is the FG website: www.friendagorilla.org where to date we have received over 70,000 page views, $29,000 and counting through direct friending and gifts in kind towards the cause. Read more

Minister pledges to link Bwindi National park to the hydro power grid

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park world heritage site and home to more than a half of the surviving mountain gorilla population stands to benefit from connectivity to hydro electric power supply and improved access roads according to State minister for Tourism Hon. Serapio Rukundo.

During his recent tour of the BINP offices at Buhoma where he also presided over a community event organized by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) through its Friend-a-Gorilla (FG) initiative, at Gorilla Forest Camp, the minister said he would discuss the issue of power supply with his colleague in the ministry of energy to expedite the process.

Hon. Rukundo who earlier in the day trekked mountain gorillas of Rushegura family and friended an individual currently known  as Rukundo baby, observed that “ with tourist lodges boasting of over 100 bed capacity, community projects like hospitals, orphanages and  schools, Read more...

Visitors to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to more than half of the world’s mountain gorillas are set to reap more value for their money from a planned ultra- modern Visitor Information Centre to be built soon.

The Visitor Centre at Buhoma is being revived with funding from  the International Gorilla Conservation Program ( IGCP) in partnership with USAID-STAR, after the previous center was destroyed by rebels in 1999. However, the south western Uganda  National Park has since the early 2000 experienced full security and a steady growth in the number of tourists.

The IGCP and Uganda Wildlife Authority had built the center at Buhoma to house education material for visitors and train ranger guides in forest ecology. According to the Conservation Area Manager (CAM) for Bwindi–Mgahinga Conservation Area, Charles Tumwesigye, the center is expected to boost visitor orientation and information dissemination. Read more....

The Friend-a-Gorilla project of Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) - will on the eve of Uganda’s 48th Independence anniversary (9^th October 2010) be honored to host Mr. Bart Dorrestein, the chairman of the South Africa based Legacy Group Holdings during a Business Leaders’ Dinner followed by  the 2010 Jazz Safari at Kampala Serena Hotel.

Mr. Dorrestein will address an elite  group of business leaders at a fund raising dinner on the theme:   Achieving Exponential Business Growth. Proceeds from  both the dinner and the concert will be going towards the Friend-a-gorilla cause.

Mr. Dorrestein, a graduate of Science from the University of Witwatersrand, is the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the famous Legacy Hotels and Resorts in South Africa. He also previously served as CEO Stocks and Stocks Holdings Ltd, General Manager Stocks Rand and Design Engineer, DW Saunderson &Partners. Read more....