Bwindi Impenetrable looking to Coffee conservation
Home to 43% of the World’s remaining over 1000 endangered free-ranging mountain gorillas, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and its wildlife is increasingly at the mercy of human population: habitat fragmentation, human encroachment, poaching and the spread of infectious zoonotic diseases, including COVID-19 are poking on its survival. The threat of disease spread is particularly high for the closely related mountain gorillas.
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is encircled by some of the most impoverished and marginalized communities in Uganda.
Remotely detached, her infrastructure ram shackled, access to the market frail, and this is deepened by opportunities are at the lowest ebb. While agriculture exists, either commercial or for subsistence, for the most part, livelihoods are heavily dependent on tourism with mountain gorilla trekking in Bwindi a big draw for international and domestic visitors. The parks eminent place as a habitat for gorilla tourism in the world is tempting to visiting tourists.
Due to the bumper around the park, community members are harvesting as rangers, porters in the lodges, hotels and restaurants as the rest survive off vending handicrafts and souvenirs to visitors. The high risk dependence on tourism was exposed during the COVID-19 crisis which brought tourism in Uganda to its knees after the aviation industry was cut off while internal movement restricted. The additional ban on primate tourism to safeguard against the threat of transmission of COVID-19 added salt to the lockdown injuries.
The communities suffered the distress; households and individuals were suddenly plunged into poverty. Glaring at a dark survival, the desperation induced the community into poaching. Intense poaching and illegal entry into the forest claimed the first gorilla poaching incident in nine years, just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic.
For those engaged in commercial agriculture like coffee growing on the outskirts of the park, isolation, poor infrastructure and limited market access often suffocate a fair price for their harvest. To reverse their misfortune, Gorilla Conservation Coffee was founded in 2015 as a social enterprise of Conservation through Public Health, a non-profit organization conserving the apes from Bwindi.
Gorilla Conservation Coffee seeks to create a lifeline through: providing new, alternative and sustainable livelihood options for smallholder farmers seeking better returns for their harvest. For others looking to diversity their income streams, the initiative will shock-absorb their gains in times of financial shock.
About Gorilla Conservation Coffee
Gorilla Conservation Coffee engages and skills smallholder coffee farmers to optimize agronomic best practices. This can be drummed up with providing a reliable market, paying a higher premium price for coffee than previously available. With that, communities reliant on coffee will welcome sustainable incomes. Over time, dependence on natural resources to meet basic needs will evaporate. With the risk of infection with human disease minimized, mountain gorillas can bask at a ‘happily ever after’ existence in their habitats or other wildlife – and gives rise to Gorilla Conservation Coffee’s tag line – Saving Gorillas one sip at a time!
The harvests
- Gorilla Conservation Coffee has transformed the lives of smallholder coffee farmers around Bwindi – making coffee farming a sustainable livelihood and a viable alternative to tourism or illegal activity. Already, there is a milestone to claim – Under the initiative the first coffee to directly tie benefits of coffee growing with improved conservation and livelihood in the area of growth was registered. In addition, a donation from every bag of coffee sold goes towards Conservation. This is through Public Health’s gorilla conservation and community health programs. The impact has been priceless to mountain gorilla conservation efforts.
- Happy with the initiative, consumers have reciprocated with more purchases to support the cause.
- Gorilla Conservation Coffee has seen attitudes improve in favour of wildlife and biodiversity conservation, providing a foundation for healthy and sustainable coexistence.
- Gorilla Conservation Coffee has also ushered the plight of the mountain gorillas to the world’s attention and offers a direct way to contribute to their conservation.
To purchase this award-winning coffee which was voted in the top 30 coffees by The Coffee Review in 2018, please visit https://gorillaconservationcoffee.org/where-to-buy/.
