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The first time that I saw a mountain gorilla was when I was
doing research in Bwindi, as a vet student, and I felt like I was
meeting a very close relative. I think it is very important that we
redouble our efforts to save the gorillas. There are a lot of issues
they are coming up against, such as human population growth,
disease, poaching, habitat loss … We should go beyond the usual
people who know about conservation, and go to people who don’t
care about conservation and get them to start caring about the
gorillas. Because as long as we have very high family sizes and
population growth and as long as we have inadequate health
care, people are still going to want to go into the forest to poach
and collect firewood, and even get tempted to poach gorillas. So,
I want to urge the whole world to take the gorilla conservation
issue very seriously, because it affects us in every way.
The first time I treated a gorilla it was a very intense and emo-
tional experience, because once we darted the gorilla we had to
chase away the silverback. And everybody was so scared of doing
it, because it was the first time it had ever been done in Uganda.
So we didn’t have experienced trackers like they do in Rwanda
where they have been doing it for some years. Luckily I was with
an experienced vet from Kenya Wildlife Service, Dr. Richard
Koch and as he was working on the gorilla, I was the one chas-
ing the silverback away!
This was during the scabies outbreak. There was an adult fe-
male, a juvenile and a baby, and while Richard was working on
the juvenile, because that was the only one we were able to dart,
I started going to the silverback and saying “woo, woo” and he
looked at me, and he didn’t take me seriously. I kept doing it,
and then he walked away just a few metres and sat down and
looked at us; he didn’t really go, he just moved a little further
away and watched the whole procedure.
Once he was safely further away, I was able to get back and
work with Richard on the gorilla and we treated him with Iver-
mectin. He recovered; the rest of the group recovered, except the
infant who unfortunately died, because we got to it too late. But
this made us ask, “where do they get scabies from?” because it
was the first time it had ever been recorded in mountain goril-
las. Eventually we realised that it came from people and we
realised that the people’s public health needed to improve if we
are going to protect the mountain gorillas, and indeed all the
gorillas in Africa.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
Wildlife veterinarian, founder and CEO, Conservation
through Public Health, Uganda
INTERVIEW
“
It is important we redouble
our efforts to save the gorillas
”