Tourists flocking to view gorillas in wild

Press, 1 September 1989, Page 8

Tourists flocking to view gorillas in wild

NZPA-Reuter Virunga National Park, Zaire Salam, a 140 kg mountain gorilla, had an armed guard, a trail guide and five tourists watching him eat breakfast in the jungle, but he didn’t seem to mind.

He merely grunted at intervals in his basso profundo voice to the group arrayed in a semi-circle about two metres away, watching him tear vines from a tree and pull them sideways through his enormous mouth to remove leaves.

A park guard, Mura Sira, aged 25, responded with like noises, explaining this was his way of reassuring Salam, a powerful silver-backed male, that we were friendly So it went for 45 minutes in

the jungle high on a mountain in one of the most remote parts of eastern Zaire.

From all over the world — Japan, the United States and .Europe — people are flocking to see the hottest tourist attraction to emanate from the jungle in years — gorillas in the wild. “It’s what everyone wants to do, especially since the movie came out,” said Philippe Lelotte, manager of the local branch of the Zairean travel and shipping company, AMIZA. The movie is “Gorillas in the Mist,” about the naturalist Dian Fossey, who studied wild mountain gorillas in neighbouring Rwanda. The movie’s stunning close-up shots have triggered a tourist boom in 'Zaire’s Virunga National Park and in Rwanda, both of

which offer organised tours to see wild mountain gorillas. Mountain gorillas, the biggest of all gorillas, are an endangered species and can be seen only in the wild. The World Wide Fund for Nature says there are fewer than 600 in the world — about 300 in the Virunga Mountains, which extend from Zaire into Rwanda, and a similar number in Uganda.

Mr Lelotte spends much of his time rounding up park permits for the daily quota of 24 visitors — only 12 a day are allowed to see each of the park’s two gorilla families. There are 17 apes in one family and about 30 in the other.

It is, of course, less costy to watch gorillas in the cinema tian in the

wild. Permits cost $l6O a person. Driving to the park from the nearest town, Goma, can easily cost $l6O, or $339 for the round trip. Visitors usually spend a day or two in a Goma hotel, which costs $B4 or $lOl a night And many visitors fly two hours from the Zairean capital, Kinshasa, at $509 one way. None of that seems insurmountable, even to backpackers who arrive overland from Rwanda, where park permits are more expensive, to see gorillas at a discount in Zaire. “It’s why I came here,” said John Purcell, an Irish schoolteacher who works in England and who bought a permit although he had barely enough money for dinner. Visitors often walk hoajs through dense jungle to see the which

move to different spots almost every night in search of fresh vines and bamboo. .Guides hack trails through the brush, following traces of vegetation mangled by the gorillas, while tourists scramble to follow. It can. be exhausting, but most visitors seem to think the experience is worthwhile. “It’s not as tiring as it seems because once you get to see the gorillas you don't feel tired anymore,” said Bernadette Houdon, a schoolteacher from Poitiers, France. “It’s great that you can get so near a gorilla,” said Lars Dachnio, a electronics technician from Gielsenkirchen, West Germany. “They are » powerful and we seem so 1