Gorilla Visit Increase in Rwanda

Mountain gorilla tracking in is hard work up steep slopes, through fascinating and a wide number of Tourists across the world travel to Africa to meet the great apes. Besides, one of the tourist who got in touch with the great apes twice had this to say. “Having met the Gorilla family twice I feel as if they are my family so you can imagine my joy when I saw that they had a another child”.

Thus, the recent tourist arrival statistics and reports from the Rwanda Development Board, which is in the office of Rwanda Tourism and conservation has released a report indicating a growth in the number of gorilla safari tourist to Rwanda just in the first quarter of this year .
The Statistics Offer Joel Rudasingwa noted that it’s because of the improvement in the financial state of the world, which will heal the global financial crisis and later impact positively on its trend towards recovery which led to this increase .

"The great decrease was observed in the first semester of 2009, which can be attributed to the global financial crisis, which put many countries in recession,” However, from July to September 2009 which is the high season, gorilla visits surpassed 156 people every day. Meanwhile, official statistics from Rwanda Development Board indicate that in the first quarter of 2010 gorilla visits have generated Rwf1.2 billion with about 4,000 visitors comparing to last year same period.

Rwanda boasts of almost 280 gorillas in total with Uganda and DR Congo having a good number of the primates since gorillas are very rare species in the world. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, only 700 mountain gorillas are left in the whole world. Above all, Tourism is Rwanda's leading export earner ahead of tea and coffee. The sector contributes about 3.5 percent to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and it is expected to account for 5.8 percent of the GDP by 2016.

Gorilla trekking generates the highest revenues in visits to Rwanda's three national parks. It is believed that about 85 percent of visitors to the Volcanoes National Park are attracted by Mountain gorilla tracking . Young gorillas, from three to six years old, remind human observers of children. Much of their day is spent in play, climbing trees, chasing one another, and swinging from branches. The fun the gorillas shouldn’t be what you can miss in life.