A Healthy Environment for People and Gorillas

Providing Africans in Rwanda and Congo with health care, clinics, medicines, clean water, and health education helps gorillas survive.

We work to protect gorillas in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in a landscape that includes some of the most densely populated, and most troubled, areas in Africa. The parks where gorillas are protected are surrounded by communities of people whose poverty and poor health create threats to the animals and to the overall ecosystem shared by people and gorillas. When people are suffering from disease, they are not able to participate in conservation issues. In addition, human respiratory infections and intestinal parasites are easily transmitted to the gorillas.

Our Ecosystem Health Program

Our community health programs seek to create a healthy environment for both people and gorillas by working with local communities to develop new sources of income, health care, food and clean water, and providing education about disease prevention and the significance of endangered species. This also helps create community support that is essential to successful conservation efforts. Our Ecosystem Health Program began in 1998 and has grown to include intestinal parasite treatment, hygiene education, clean water access, essential protein access, via micro-enterprise, rehabilitation of rural health clinics, and education access for children.

Over the past few years, more than 400,000 people in Rwanda and the Congo have been helped through our Ecosystem Health Program.