Long before Uganda officially marked the World Gorilla Day, the real story has already been visible on the ground around Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park: forests that host mountain gorillas are translating into steady income, jobs, and infrastructure for the people who live alongside them.
Uganda is home to over half of the world’s mountain gorillas, based on the 2019 census, and a newer count is currently being finalized pending DNA analysis. The rest of the population is found in the Rwanda’s Volcanoes Park and the DR Congo’s Virunga National Park of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to John Makombo, Uganda Wildlife Authority’s commissioner for biodiversity management, the gorilla population keeps climbing, thanks to a steady stream of new births and that growth has fed directly into rising visitor numbers at both parks.
Numbers Behind the Boom
Mgahinga’s visitor count has grown from 3,601 in the 2021/22 financial year to 6,222 by 2024/25. Bwindi’s growth has been even sharper climbing from 20,367 visitors in 2021/22 to a peak of 43,984 in 2023/24, before easing slightly to 43,716 the following year.
UWA spokesperson Bashir Hangi notes these totals cover all park activities, not gorilla trekking alone. Revenue has followed a similar, if bumpier, path. The two parks brought in over Shs 147.9 billion in total tourism revenue in 2022/23, with Shs 109.8 billion of that from gorilla tourism specifically.
A dip followed in 2023/24 partly blamed on travel advisories from foreign governments before stakeholder-led recovery campaigns pushed earnings back up to Shs 142 billion in 2024/25 and Shs 162.5 billion in 2025/26, with gorilla tourism contributing Shs 110 billion of the most recent total.
Where the Money Actually Goes
This is where the story moves beyond statistics. In the year ending June 2025, UWA channeled Shs 2.97 billion in revenue-sharing funds into communities around the Bwindi-Mgahinga Conservation Area money that flows into local projects, enterprises, and businesses designed to give residents a real stake in conservation.
The Buhoma Porters’ Association, founded in 1992 in northern Bwindi, now counts 100 members, with more than 50 additional porters working out of the Nyamishamba outpost. Similar community groups operate in Rushaga, Ruhija, and Nkuringo, together employing roughly 500 people who provide services to visiting tourists.
Christine Katushabe, who founded the Ruhija-based nonprofit Change a Life Bwindi, points out that the ripple effects extend well past the forest trails themselves into lodges, hospitality jobs, and markets for locally made goods. As she puts it, gorillas have become the reason communities can imagine a better future, not just a tourist draw.
That growth has also brought better roads, electricity, telecom coverage, and air connectivity to areas that once related to the forest mainly through restrictions on what they could take from it.
Conservation and Celebration
This year’s World Gorilla Day program that ran from September 19–21 in Bwindi’s Ruhija sector, folds all of this together: community clean-ups, free medical camps, tree planting, dialogue sessions, and gorilla tracking, organized by Change a Life Bwindi alongside UWA.
Uganda Tourism Board CEO Juliana Kagwa credits gorillas with driving a large share of the country’s tourist arrivals, while also pushing for sustainable trekking practices and continued diversification of Uganda’s tourism offerings spreading the benefits beyond a single species, since mountain gorillas survive only across Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC.
Planting Forests, Not Just Protecting Them
Habitat protection is getting a boost from tree planting outside park boundaries. At Ruhija Seed Secondary School, students recently planted indigenous species like Croton alongside conservationists, part of a broader push described by Joseph Muhindo, an assistant tourism and hospitality officer for the Bwindi Impenetrable Conservation Area.
He explains that extending forest cover into surrounding community land eases pressure on the park itself, particularly for households relying on trees for construction, medicine, or fuel while also helping restore rainfall catchment areas.
Change a Life Bwindi has already established an 85-acre forest and planted 56 indigenous tree species with backing from university and community partners. Katushabe says the biggest constraints are limited land and increasingly unpredictable rainfall, which affects both tree planting and local farming.
At the school, administrators welcomed the initiative for the shade and improved learning environment it will eventually provide, with staff urging households and institutions to replace any trees they cut down.
Katushabe adds that community forests could eventually support their own small ecotourism ventures while reducing the number of residents entering the park to gather resources and she’s pushing for more government focus on protecting indigenous tree species before biodiversity loss deepens.
Waste management, particularly plastic removal, rounds out the broader conservation push around the park, according to Muhindo, who describes neighboring communities as essential partners simply because of how closely their lives intersect with Uganda’s national parks.
Around Bwindi and Mgahinga, tourism and conservation have become two sides of the same coin gorilla trekking funds jobs and community projects, while tree planting and habitat work protect the very asset that makes the tourism possible in the first place.