In 2005, a Family of Congolese Mountain gorillas migrated to Rwanda and settled in the Volcanoes National Park.
There has since been an agreement between the two countries to share revenues generated from visits made to families of mountain gorillas that switch residence.
Over the weekend the international conservation community marked the ceremony of naming nineteen baby gorillas at Kinigi in Rwanda.
Rwanda thus gave half of the revenues generated from visits made to the family of Congolese mountain gorillas that migrated to Rwanda.
According to Dr. Augustine Kanyunyi, acting director of the International Gorilla Conservation, a family of twenty-three gorillas had migrated to Rwanda in the Volcanoes National Park since 2005.
“We had an arrangement so that the income generated from tourism this family be shared equally between the DRC and Rwanda,” he said adding that each tourist pays U.S. $ 500 for a family visit gorillas.
The same source says that these gorillas are visited every day. But the total amount of the sum has not been reassigned revealed.
A census conducted in 2010 jointly by the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda in the Virunga Massif, the gorilla population there would be 480 individuals (against 380 in the previous census in 2003). This group will add about 300 mountain gorillas of Bwindi Forest.
But since the early clashes between the Armed Forces of DRC (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group in the area of Jomba, in Rutshuru (North Kivu), the mountain gorillas of Virunga National Park have been exposed to crossfire of the warring parties.
According to the director of the park on the DRCongo side, Emmanuel de Merode, it is two hundred gorillas are threatened. This would have suspended tourism which had already begun to grow in the park.
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