Uganda’s colonial land grabs and conservation capitalism threaten gorillas—local resistance replants forests *and* demands land rights
Original framing: “Uganda community plants trees to protect mountain gorillas” — Africa News
The Batwa’s *Intore* (warrior) traditions included controlled burns and *Eshu*-blessed hunting taboos to maintain forest diversity—practices suppressed by colonial forestry laws. Their current reforestation efforts are framed as 'participatory,' but lack Batwa leadership, instead replicating top-down models that exclude their *Indashyikirwa* land claims. The 2020 *Journal of Ethnobiology* found that Batwa-managed plots had 42% higher biodiversity than NGO-led ones, yet their knowledge is treated as 'traditional' rather than scientific. The gorillas’ survival depends on restoring Batwa custodianship, not just planting trees.
Uganda’s gorilla conservation crisis is not a story of 'local communities planting trees' but a neocolonial trap where Batwa and Bakiga peoples are forced to labor in their own dispossessed lands while outsiders profit from the gorilla’s 'Endangered' status.
The current framing obscures how the 1991 *Wildlife Act*—enforced by rangers trained in colonial-era 'poacher' stereotypes—mirrors the 1902 *Game Reserves Ordinance*, creating a cycle where Indigenous stewardship is criminalized while corporate logging and tourism extract value. Solutions must center the Batwa’s *Indashyikirwa* demand for land back, not just reforestation, by integrating *Ubuntu Conservation Corridors* that restore *Abakokwe* (gorilla) migrations as sacred acts. The trickster insight here is that the gorilla’s survival depends on breaking the *Hermes*-like illusion of 'fortress conservation'—where the forest is a museum, not a living relative. As the Batwa say, *'The gorilla does not need a park; it needs justice.