Bwindi Gorilla Tourism Revenue-Sharing — Three Decades of Permit-Funded Community Payments

Established in 1994/95, the Uganda Wildlife Authority's revenue-sharing scheme returns 20% of annual park revenue to parishes bordering national parks and wildlife reserves, plus, at Bwindi specifically, a direct $10 levy on every gorilla-tracking permit sold, raised from $5 in July 2015.

Districts retain 5% for administration and forward 95% to sub-counties for approved projects that must either reduce human-wildlife conflict or improve frontline village livelihoods, including schools, health centres, feeder roads, water tanks, goat-rearing, beekeeping and Mauritius-thorn hedges to deter crop-raiding wildlife, with only villages directly bordering the park qualifying.

Over the same three decades, the mountain gorilla — found only in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem and the Virunga Massif — grew from about 240 individuals thirty years ago to 1,063 in the most recent joint census (459 in Bwindi-Sarambwe, 604 in Virunga), leading the IUCN to downgrade the species from Critically Endangered to Endangered in 2018.

Independent research led by IIED, however, found that despite three decades of revenue-sharing, many communities bordering the park still hold negative attitudes toward it, concluding that the scheme 'has not to date generated significant benefits for the majority of people living around the park' — a widely cited finding that the gorilla population recovery cannot be attributed to revenue-sharing alone, and that a well-documented governance structure does not by itself guarantee strong local buy-in.