People
The ‘Volcanoes family’ - from the guides and waitresses to the lodge managers and tour team - are committed to ensuring that clients have a distinctive and memorable experience in this frontier area of Africa. Many of our staff, drawn from different countries and ethnic groups, are from families which have survived conflict. All have benefited from Volcanoes’ extensive training program and today they manage our safaris and lodges. This approach to empowering local staff is unique among leading safari companies.
Principles
Africa’s great apes are under serious threat from habitat destruction, poaching and disease. As the leading gorilla safari company, Volcanoes has demonstrated our commitment to working for their survival by being the only safari company to sign the Kinshasa Declaration on Saving the Great Apes. Volcanoes’ founders have developed a responsible and sensitive ecotourism vision with three central principles:
• We believe ecotourism is essential to the survival of the great apes but needs to be carefully controlled.
• Local people need to earn a livelihood if they are to appreciate the importance of protecting both man’s nearest cousins and their habitats.
• Tourism income should also help conservation of the apes and their habitats.
The private sector is the “missing link” in creating sustainable great ape ecotourism and must play an increasing part if the future of the great apes is to be safeguarded.
Partnerships BLCF
Volcanoes Safaris BLCF, Rwanda
Volcanoes believes that long-term partnerships between ecotourism companies, local communities, conservation bodies, governments and donors are essential for the survival of great apes. In post-conflict Rwanda, Volcanoes has successfully completed a Public Private Partnership backed by the British government. The Volcanoes Business Linkages Challenge Fund project (BLCF) helped improve hotels, train local people in hospitality and guiding, increase income and improve local craftsmen’s skills and helped open up Rwanda to international tourism. The project brought an estimated US$1.5 million to the Rwandese economy.
Kyambura Gorge Ecotourism Project, Uganda
We are developing other such public-private partnership projects around great ape communities, such as the Kyambura Gorge Eco-tourism Partnership Project. On the savannah plains below the Rwenzoris, Volcanoes latest lodge -Kyambura Gorge Lodge - is being built near the seemingly-secret Kyambura Gorge located at the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park. The Gorge is almost at the geographical centre of the Greater Virunga Landscape, at the heart of the Albertine Rift that straddles Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. This landscape is one of the most important areas for avian, primate and wildlife biodiversity in Africa. The original Volcanoes site for the lodge, adjoining the Gorge, had about 25 acres and we have since increased it to about 60 acres to protect the neighbouring areas of the Gorge to create a buffer zone as well as purchasing the site of an illegal brickworks which will be reconverted back to wetland. Research sponsored by Volcanoes and conducted by Nicole Simmons, a researcher from the USA over the last two years, has revealed that only 16 chimpanzees remain in this isolated troop that live here, about half that of 20 years ago. The Volcanoes Kyambura Gorge Ecotourism Partnership, a major long term Kyambura Gorge eco-tourism partnership project, will link the eco-lodge we are building to the community, promote the conservation of chimpanzees, and create a buffer zone to help protect the Gorge.
Partnership Trust
From the safari price paid by every client Volcanoes makes a contribution to the Volcanoes Partnership Trust, a separate non-profit organisation which undertakes community and conservation activities. These activities have included the employment of the Intore Dancers, a troop of dancers that perform one of Rwanda’s traditional dances for clients at Virunga Lodge. This group was set up and trained as part of the Volcanoes Safaris BLCF project and continue to be employed as part of the Trust’s community activities. Research on the chimp population of Kyambura Gorge, carried out by US researcher Nicole Simmons as part of the Trusts’ conservation activities has established that this chimpanzee population is half that of 20 years ago and severely threatened. The Volcanoes Kyambura Gorge Eco-tourism Partnership project will promote the protection of these chimpanzees and create a buffer zone between the Gorge and the local communities. For further information on this please see the Partnerships section of our website. Other conservation and community activities funded by the Trust include road construction and improvements that help local people take their produce to markets and carry water to their homes, and contributing towards connection water supplies in Bunyaruguru, Uganda.
Etienne & Praveen at the Great Apes Conference
BLCF supported dance group at Virunga Lodge
