UWA slashes Gorilla and Chimp tracking rates

By Watchdog reporter

Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has slashed Gorilla and Chimpanzee tracking rates ahead of Easter season as a way of attracting more tourists both local and foreign.

The new rates will effect from 1 April to 31 May 2017.

Uganda provides the greatest opportunities for tracking Chimpanzees in East African region. You can do chimpanzee tracking in various parts of the country. The country is home to over 5000 chimpanzees in protected and unprotected areas. The Chimpanzee tracking areas described here are habituated, meaning that they are used to humans and will go about their days while you are near them. Meanwhile you can see chimpanzees in zoos or sanctuaries, there is nothing like seeing the chimpanzees in their natural habitat in the wild. There are also chimpanzees in Bwindi (not habituated) and other degraded forest fragments on private land across western Uganda. The increasing demand for tourism and research is leading to more groups of chimpanzees being habituated. The table below gives a basic guideline to Research and tourism sites with habituated chimpanzees in the Albertine Rift, Western Uganda (Please note that chimpanzees habituated for research only are meant for research not tourism. You can’t see this as a tourist.

Meanwhile, Uganda has started an aggressive and marketing and promotion marketing campaign in order to increase tourist arrival from the current 1.3 million visitors to four million by the year 2020.