GCCoffee is a for-profit social enterprise aiming to improve livelihoods of coffee farmers and protect mountain gorillas in the area. GCCoffee buys coffee at a premium, processes and sells it as a branded roasted coffee, whose purchase includes a donation to Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH).
GCCoffee pays a premium price to enable marginalised small-holder coffee farmers living in remote sub-counties bordering Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to improve their lives, which keeps them from resorting to damaging the forest through activities like poaching and removing resources like wood. This in turn helps protect the gorillas and their habitat.
GCCoffee also provides training and capacity building to farmers to improve sustainable agriculture practices. GCCoffee targets coffee drinkers and tourists via shops, tourist lodges, airports and international distributors to market and sell coffee.
By Mark Jordahl, Natural Habitat Adventures Posted on October 2, 20170
Mountain gorillas are some of our closest relatives, sharing as much as 98 percent of our human genes. This remarkable similarity is part of what makes it so profound to spend an hour with these gentle giants on one of our gorilla safaris. Unfortunately, this similarity also means that we can share diseases, and disease transmission from humans to the gorillas poses one of the greatest threats to their survival.
The realization that you can’t address the health of mountain gorillas without also addressing the health of the human communities nearby led Gladys Kalema, the first female veterinarian with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, to create a project called Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH). The team members from CTPH do direct monitoring of gorilla health, and also educate the locals on family planning, personal hygiene, reducing reliance on forest products like firewood, sustainable agricultural techniques, and ways to reduce conflict with the wild gorillas who often enter their farms looking for an easy meal.
Wildlife conservation is not a one-solution issue, and perhaps one of the most important aspects of any conservation program in Africa is helping local people find economic alternatives to extracting resources from natural areas. Any time people enter the protected areas that harbor the mountain gorillas to collect firewood, cut bamboo, or hunt for bush meat, the chance of disease transmission increases. But if those community members have no other source of income, they will do what it takes to feed their families.
CTPH recently received funding from WWF-Switzerland to launch a coffee enterprise to benefit the Buhoma community adjacent to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to nearly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. In July 2017, a small group of Natural Habitat Adventures travelers were the first to have the opportunity to visit the Gorilla Conservation Coffee project on a “coffee safari.”
Coffee is a great crop to grow on the border of gorilla habitat because, so far, mountain gorillas have not caught on to the wonders of drinking coffee. Coffee and tea plantations can create a buffer between the forest and food crops, because the gorillas entering the plantations will turn back, thinking that there is nothing for them to feed on in the area.
The coffee farmers in Buhoma have formed a cooperative to sell fresh coffee beans at a premium to Gorilla Conservation Coffee. The project has invested in processing equipment that gets the beans to the point of being ready to roast. The beans are then sent to Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, where they are roasted and packaged for sale. The income from the coffee supports local farmers and CTPH’s work protecting critically endangered mountain gorillas.
At Natural Habitat Adventures, we are proud to partner with an organization like WWF that looks for opportunities across the globe to provide seed funding that results in long-term, sustainable solutions like this that benefit both people and wildlife. Gorilla trekking in Uganda is one of the many ways that you can support innovative conservation projects like these.
And hey—the world can always use more delicious coffee, right?
The 100% Arabica Kanyonyi Coffee Blend is named after the former lead silverback gorilla of Mubare Gorilla Group, the first group habituated for tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda.
Kanyonyi was named after the little stream where he was born in 1996. The 100% Arabica Kanyonyi Coffee Blend is our first coffee blend and named after the former lead silverback gorilla of Mubare Gorilla Group, the first group habituated for tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
We have named the blend after Kanyonyi because he signified what has been achieved in conservation since Bwindi Impenetrable Forest was made a National Park in 1992 and tourism began in 1993. Kanyonyi’s father – Ruhondeza – was heading Mubare group when tourism began in Bwindi, and his accommodating nature brought significant benefits to the Bwindi local community.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, as the first Veterinary Officer of the Uganda Wildlife Authority, successfully operated on Kanyonyi’s older sister who had a rare condition of a rectal prolapse, and was named Kahara because she liked to baby-sit her younger brother, Kanyonyi. When Ruhondeza died in 2012 the local community came to pay their last respects, showing that their relationship with the park management has greatly improved and that the local community values mountain gorillas. Our hopes are that the Kanyonyi Coffee Blend will continue to build upon these conservation efforts by providing a meaningful livelihood to farmers who live next door to the critically endangered mountain gorillas.
Click here to buy Gorilla Conservation Coffee for yourself, family and friends around the world to support and good cause. Join us in #SavingGorillasOneSipAtATime
