Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) on Tuesday launched a digital application dubbed My Gorilla Family under the Home of the Gorillas initiative, aimed at increasing global awareness about mountain gorillas as well as establishing a non-trekking revenue stream towards gorilla conservation.
The Home of the Gorillas is a partnership between UWA and RoundBob/The Naturalist- a Ugandan conservation enterprise working towards the protection of Mountain Gorillas.
Through the app, people around the world will be able to, at a cost of 2 dollars a month, do virtual trekking of the gorillas; follow the gorillas’ daily excursions and family migrations, celebrate their birthdays, get updates on new births as well as live feeds and prerecorded entertaining visuals and animated voice overs from the gorilla habitat.
Speaking at the launch held at Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, UWA ED Sam Mwandha said the Authority needs more funds to be able to follow through with the conservation responsibility noting however, that the staple revenue source – trekking, is not holistic and sustainable.
“We are looking at finding other means of generating revenue that can be utilized in conservation, research and ensuring that the mountain gorillas in our protected areas can continue to exist. In this era of digital communications, the App is timely and we will use it to mobilize resources towards our major mandate which is conservation,” Mwandha said.
He also noted that the initiative will support UWA in educating the local communities and masses world over about the importance of protecting and conserving the mountain gorillas.
Giving his remarks at the launch event, David Gonahasa, Co-Founder of The Naturalist, said the application is an alternative way to fund mountain gorilla conservation other than the staple ones; gorilla trekking and donor funding.
“If we allowed more people to be part of the process, we could be able to acquire more money to fund conservation. We are looking at generating money that goes to harmonizing the human-wildlife conflict, supporting communities but also giving people a close virtual interaction with the gorillas. People across the world will now be able to connect with the gorillas as you would on other mobile platforms like Instagram, snapchat and tiktok. Through entertainment, we will fund the core needs of conservation,” Gonahasa said.
He added, “In addition to the subscription-based application the Gorillas initiative will launch the first conservation limited NFT collection linked to the over 200 habituated individual mountain gorillas in the wild. This will fund will support the daily operations of the initiative such as installing and managing cameras in the forests, curating video content for uploading onto the application and the general marketing strategy.”
The entity aims to raise US$380,000 to fund operations of both My Gorilla Family festival and My Gorilla Family Application. The target sources include development partners, the government, donors, corporate companies and individuals among others.
My Gorilla Family App subscribers will receive an all-access pass to the Bwindi-Mgahinga Conservation Area.
Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) CEO Lily Ajarova said the App is one of the tools that Uganda will use to bolster gorilla conservation and market one of the country’s premium tour products- gorilla trekking.
“My Gorilla Family App is aiding us keep up with the trend of marketing globally. This should be able to get the world to know more about what Uganda has to offer not only the gorillas. We also hope that after knowing where the mountain gorillas are and all the conservation efforts in Uganda, it will be able to bring many other people to explore Uganda,” Ajarova said.
The other objective of the initiative is to get the surrounding community to take ownership and participate in operations at the home of the gorillas. This is aimed at harmonizing the co-existence of the animals and the humans and mitigating the threats facing endangered species and historic wildlife habitats.
Uganda is home to over 50% of the world’s remaining Mountain Gorillas.