The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in southwest Uganda, is famous for its critically endangered mountain gorilla (gorilla beringei beringei).

But the communities living in close proximity to the park are also the poorest and therefore the most in need of forest resources — meat for food and timber for fuel and building shelter — yet these are considered protected assets by the government.

These communities see the park and the forest as their lifeline. The dominant ethnic group around Bwindi is the Bakiga, but the forest is home to the Batwa, a forest-dwelling people believed to be part of the larger pigmy populations of eastern Congo and Central Africa.

In 1991, Bwindi was gazetted as a national park and in 1992 the Batwa were forcibly evicted from the park. The park was later in 1994 designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in recognition of the international importance of its exceptional species richness and diversity.

It was home to approximately half of the world’s mountain gorilla population. In the same year, the park adopted the Integrated Conservation and Development (ICD) projects to protect the park’s animals and benefit local communities at the same time.

Twenty years later, there are mixed results from the ICD projects. Although the 2011 gorilla census showed that Bwindi’s mountain gorilla population was increasing, bushmeat hunting was identified as one of the greatest threats to the gorillas and the national park.

Research showed that, after 20 years of ICD interventions, bushmeat was the one forest resource that local people desired and consumed the most.

The research, contained in a report by the Uganda Poverty and Conservation Learning Group, says that fairness is the missing ingredient in the ICD projects.

The report, titled Linking Conservation, Equity and Poverty Alleviation, sought to understand who undertakes hunting and other illegal activities and why.

READ: Challenges that face Bwindi forest conservation

It found that feelings of injustice are as important a driver of such activities as rural poverty. According to the researchers, poaching that endangered species, overexploitation of natural resources and agricultural encroachment are commonly listed as threats to Bwindi conservation.

Conflict between local communities and conservation authorities, particularly over crop raiding by wild animals, is often described as a factor undermining efforts to gain local support for protected areas.

The research also showed the diversity of people involved in unauthorised resource use and their reasons for doing so: Poverty attributable to the national park (crop raiding and loss of access to forest resources, notably meat and firewood) drove unauthorised resource use, yet so too did resentment that benefits from the national park (notably tourism revenue sharing and employment) were not reaching those suffering the most from human-wildlife conflict.

“Some people hunt in the park because they cannot afford to buy meat or raise livestock,” said Medard Twinamatsiko, a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation and co-author of the report.

Life around the park

“Others hunt, not because they are poor, but because they feel the national park is unjust. They hunt to exact compensation for crops and livestock lost to wild animals from the park, or because they resent the fact that ICD projects fail to benefit them or that the park gives jobs to outsiders,” Twinamatsiko adds.

In understanding resource users at Bwindi, the study shows that people living in the frontline zone of the national park (within half a kilometre of the park boundary) were significantly poorer than people living farther away, and they appeared to be in a poverty trap — they had little education and so were disadvantaged when seeking employment; were at risk of disease from poor sanitation facilities and, being close to the national park, were more vulnerable to crop raiding by wild animals, which reduces food production and the income available to them.

“Bushmeat was the forest resource that local people desired most and, out of the five resources assessed, the most widely consumed. Those hunting and consuming bushmeat were not only those who lived close to the national park but also those in remote areas, which were characteristically associated with the poorest people of Bwindi,” the report says.

“Certainly, hunting was driven by a lack of money to buy meat or livestock, and medicinal needs for treating sickness. Yet when exploring the profiles of hunters, it was evident that people who were not the poorest in their communities were linked with hunting and bushmeat consumption.”