Baraza

Category: Albertine Rift Project, Bwindi, Uganda, conservation, wildlifedirect | Date: Jun 16 2009 | By: admin

January this year on one of our visits to Uganda we had the privilege of meeting one of Africa’s leading conservationists. Gladys Kalema Zikusoka, recently the winner of the prestigious Whitley Fund for Nature awards. Her organisation Conservation Through Public Health is one of WildlifeDirects new Albertine Rift Project blogs.

The team and I were immediately captivated by CTPH and decided they would make a phenomenol blog advocating gorilla conservation. On our return to Nairobi we started making preparations for the followup visit conducting a blogging training workshop in Uganda and Rwanda.

Organised with the help of CTPH a 10 hour journey from Kampala, we held a workshop in Buhoma for the benefit of the community members adjacent to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. An IT centre had already been established by CTPH, run on the ground by David Matsiko. The centre has trained over 150 community members to use computers and navigate their way around the Internet.  This provided an excellent opportunity to train members in the art of blogging and share their experiences and thoughts through a twin blog to the CTPH one Gladys updates. A blog that would be all about the community and the role in gorilla conservation through CTPH.

Our workshop and lodgings were at the CTPH campsite close to the national park.

Alex Ngabirano gave us a tour of the lab where all the samples collected from the field  gorilla fecal samples) by Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers were stored and analysed. After traveling to Uganda and Rwanda Twice now working with organisations doing gorilla conservation and still not having seen one myself I was just as happy to be staring into one of the specimens containing a gorillas lunch from a week ago.

Alex explained how CTPH began it’s work looking into the incidences of disease outbreak in gorillas and comparing it to that of the human population in communities nearby.  It is described in more detail in the introductary post on the CTPH blog.

For more on CTPH keep your eyes on their blog.

Published by Masumi.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Bwindi, CTPH, Gladys Kalema Zikusoka, Whitley Awards, wildlifedirect

One response so far

Category: Forests, WildlifeDirect news | Date: Feb 20 2009 | By: baraza

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park

The WildlifeDirect team then went to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park on the way to Rwanda.  This involved a bus trip to Kabale in Uganda then we took a cab to Bwindi a ride of about 2 hours.  We arrived there at around six in the evening.  The road there was being repaired and it was basically a smooth trip.  The scenery was amazing to say the least.

The Parks Boundary

We got there in the evening at around five in the evening, hoping to see the famed gorillas but we weren’t in luck as we were told that to actually see the gorillas we would have to go deep into the park so we had to settle for giant earthworms.

 Giant Earthworm

At the park is The Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation who are about to join our blog network.  We met Doug, Miriam and Joel who treated us to a sumptous dinner where we combined work and some food.  Daniel who is a field assistant regaled us with stories of his gorilla tracking excursions.  As conversations went on Enoch, Doug and Joel found out that they’d all worked in Papua New Guinea but at different times.

Bwindi is very cold and dark at night and it really lives to its name ‘Impenetrable Forest’.  Nights there are filled with animal sounds some eerie others normal, so we tucked in and prepared ourselves for the next leg of the journey that would take to Rwanda.

Tags: Bwindi, ITFC, MacArthur Foundation, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far