New Gorilla Family named Busingye soon to open for Tourism

The Southern sector of Rushaga in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park originally had only one Gorilla family which is Nshongi. However, as of recent, the sector has undergone a lot of transformation since the effectiveness of Gorilla tourism in the Park. Nshongi at the time of its habituation had the world’s largest mountain gorilla numbers but since its break up, three more families have been habituated including Mishaya and Bweza who split on 1^st August 2012.

In the same sector, another gorilla group was habituated which is Kahungye has also witnessed yet another breakaway hence creating the new family called Busingye. This is now good news since many Gorilla permits will be available for sale for Gorilla Safaris and tours in Bwindi. The Gorilla family is led by a dominant silverback Busingye who fights constantly in the wild for female adults. Busingye Gorilla group split from Kahungye family on 4^th June 2012 and as of now the Rushaga sector has 5 gorilla groups including: Mishaya, Kahungye, Nshongi, Bweza and Busingye.

The strong Busingye silver back has however from time to time showed how capable he is to tilt the power balance in the south which has a crowded home range of its habituated gorillas that keep over lapping one another. Whenever he interacts with a wild family which is not yet habituated, he mercilessly grabs a female from that group for himself and joins the family.

According to the Area Conservation Manager BMCA Mr. Pontius Ezuma, Uganda Wildlife Authority has got more space available for tourists who intend to do gorilla tracking in the southern sector of the Bwindi Park. He advises that the visitors can now book this family because it is one of the versatile and exciting groups one can visit for a memorable time while in Bwindi’s Impenetrable park for gorilla tourism.

A research from the BMCA Monitoring team which is led by the Research Warden Kato Raymond shows that there are no intentions of the breakaway families to fuse back to their parent families in the future. This is characterized by the fierce battles between mother and breakaway families. The battles are only restricted to dominant silverbacks who are supposed to guard their turf. Due to these battles, each group has not tried to avoid direct interactions with one another for fear f potential loss of members.

Once this group is open to tourism and permits are ready for sale at the Uganda Wildlife Authority, we will let all our customers know and also have an experience with the new family while on their Uganda Gorilla Safaris.