WHEN Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka became Uganda鈥檚 first wildlife vet in 1995, there were just 650 wild mountain gorillas in the world, 300 of which were in in south-western Uganda. The species as a whole was critically endangered and the future looked bleak.
Then Kalema-Zikusoka had an idea. At just 25 years old, having recently graduated from London鈥檚 Royal Veterinary College, she recognised that three major threats to the gorillas 鈥� disease, habitat loss and poaching 鈥� could be tackled by improving the health and well-being of local people. This approach was highly unusual at the time, but is now seen as a model of conservation practice globally.
In 2003, she left the Ugandan Wildlife Service to become founder and chief executive officer of non-profit organisation . She has spent the past 20 years conserving mountain gorillas in Bwindi, and populations are on the rise. Her memoir, , will be published on 13 April. She spoke to 快猫短视频 about her life and work.
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Graham Lawton: How did you get the job as Uganda鈥檚 first wildlife vet straight out of veterinary college?
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka: Whenever I came home on holidays from college, I worked with wildlife. I worked in , where I did my very first study on wildlife, looking at parasites in the faecal samples of chimps. Two years later, I went to Bwindi and I studied mountain gorillas.
I thought, I would like to do this full-time. So, I sent a report to the executive director of the National Parks. I told him, I think you need a vet, and he surprised me. He said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e thinking of hiring a vet. Your job is waiting for you!鈥� I鈥檓 like, what!? So, I came back to Uganda and taught myself how to treat the wildlife.
What was the first wildlife illness that you tackled?
One of my first cases was when the gorillas in Bwindi got scabies. They were losing their hair and developing white, scaly skin. I went to a human doctor friend of mine and I asked, what鈥檚 the most common skin disease in people? And she鈥檚 like, it鈥檚 scabies. It鈥檚 very common in low-income groups of people who don鈥檛 have good hygiene.
So, I went to the gorillas with some ivermectin, which is good for treating scabies. We were able to treat the gorillas, but a baby was dropped by her mother because she was already too far gone and she died. The baby had pneumonia because she had lost almost all of her hair.
How do gorillas catch scabies from humans?
People put dirty clothing on scarecrows to chase away gorillas and other wildlife and we think the gorillas were picking it up by touching the clothing, because nobody was touching the gorillas in those days.
Scabies was pretty common in the local communities, so people said, we need to improve community hygiene because the gorillas are just going to keep picking up things. Not just scabies: there鈥檚 open defecation, so they could pick up cholera or typhoid. People don鈥檛 cover their rubbish heaps. I was the only vet in the Uganda Wildlife Authority at the time, so everyone was looking at me.
How did you help local communities and gorillas?
We developed a team of health workers who go to people鈥檚 homes to talk about hygiene, sanitation, nutrition, sustainable agriculture. We did a lot of hygiene education: wash clothes, cover your rubbish heaps, have toilets.
We went beyond wildlife health and started looking at habitat protection. We talk about conservation issues, about why gorillas are important, why local people should protect the forest and how to prevent zoonotic disease. Some of the team were taught to give injections for family planning.
Why the focus on family planning?
USAID (the US Agency for International Development, which promotes contraception to reduce poverty and to aid conservation) approached us and said, we love what you鈥檙e doing around Bwindi, can you add family planning? First of all I was reluctant, but then I realised that many people had many children 鈥� some can have 10 children.
Half of the kids go to school and the other half are staying at home to chase wildlife from the garden. The ones who don鈥檛 go to school don鈥檛 have a future because the whole cycle of poverty doesn鈥檛 end. All they can do is dig in the garden and go to the forest to poach. And there are too many of them, so they can鈥檛 get proper healthcare. So gorillas would get sick.
We did a survey. A lot of women didn鈥檛 want to be having all these kids, they wanted contraception.
When you go to a village where people are in poverty, is it difficult to convince them to value wildlife, when they are often in conflict with it?
It is a difficult conversation to have when people are so poor and a gorilla has just destroyed their banana plant. But if they are benefiting from living next to wildlife, they can tolerate wildlife better. The fact that we鈥檙e improving their healthcare was a very good way to break the ice because we show them that we care about them as well, not just the wildlife.
One Health, the conservation concept that the health of people, animals and ecosystems are connected, sounds similar to what you are doing. Did you invent it?
Conservation Through Public Health was one of the very first organisations in the world to do One Health, but we didn鈥檛 call it One Health at the time. We realised that to make sure wildlife stays healthy, we have to improve the health of people who interact with it. And to ensure that people stay healthy, you have to make sure they鈥檙e not getting diseases by poaching wildlife, and through the bushmeat trade.
Tell me about your success.
We鈥檝e seen that community health is improving, gorilla health is improving. Many more people have pit latrines, they have hand washing stations 鈥� basic hygiene. The gorillas are falling sick less often; they haven鈥檛 had a scabies outbreak since 2002. They鈥檙e picking up fewer human diseases as a direct impact of our work, and gorillas are increasing in number.
Can you put a figure on the increase in gorilla numbers?
When I participated in the first census in Bwindi in 1997, there were only 650 mountain gorillas in the world, 300 in Bwindi and 350 in Virunga National Park, in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Now, the number has gone up to more than 1063. This is the 2018 figure. In the next census, we expect to see even more than that.
Mountain gorillas have been moved from critically endangered to endangered by the (International Union for Conservation of Nature), because they鈥檙e showing a positive growth trend. All the other gorilla subspecies are going down.
The recent Ebola outbreaks in Uganda and DRC are thankfully now over. If Ebola did get into gorillas, what would happen?
The gorillas would die very quickly. Gorillas and chimpanzees in the Central African Republic got Ebola. They died, and so did the people who ate them. Over 5000 western lowland gorillas have died of Ebola over the past 25 years. So if it got into the gorillas in Bwindi, it would be terrible.
Was covid-19 a threat to the gorillas?
We were very worried during the pandemic. We were able to get people to wear masks. Respiratory diseases went down through mask wearing and now people need to continue wearing them.
Unfortunately, because of the lack of tourism during covid-19, a silverback gorilla called was killed by a hungry bushmeat poacher. This poacher had set up snares and when he speared a bush pig, it screamed and Rafiki got scared, charged and was speared.
The poacher was put in jail for 11 years, and now everyone knows that if you kill a gorilla, you can go to jail for a long time. That never used to be the case. Before it was, like, oh, kill a gorilla, bribe your way out of jail in a few weeks.
How else are you tackling poaching?
We provide seedlings of crops that grow quickly to all the vulnerable communities living around the park: cabbages, maize, groundnuts, beans, pumpkins, kale. We plant trees in gardens so that people don鈥檛 have to go into the forest for firewood.
People poach because they are hungry. If you can address hunger, then you can reduce the need for people to enter the park to poach. People do it because they鈥檙e desperate. They don鈥檛 want to harm the gorillas.
Does the model that you pioneered for gorillas work for other species?
The great ape model is the most direct because people can make gorillas and chimpanzees sick. But anywhere there鈥檚 poor people and critical biodiversity, I think this model can work. Someone told me that they thought it would work really well with tigers in India.
What is next for Conservation Through Public Health?
We would like our approach to be scaled up in other places. We are working closely with a lot of NGOs in conservation and healthcare who would like to adopt the model. We would like to focus on areas where gorillas are found. We feel that the model can be spread to other countries 鈥� Kenya, Tanzania.
Another area that we鈥檙e focusing on is preventing irresponsible tourism. Even before covid, gorillas were getting too close to tourists and tourists were getting too close to gorillas. We talk to the rangers about how to manage the tourists, even the difficult ones, so they don鈥檛 get too close. They still break the rules. The gorillas break the rules even more! But we are much stricter about it.
What needs to happen in conservation in general?
I think, as conservation groups, we have to get much more sensitive about the fact that communities have to be doing well before wildlife is to do well. I think more and more groups are noticing it and more and more conservation donors are noticing it too. You cannot conserve wildlife in isolation when the people living next to it are so poor.
