OUR RESPONSIBLE ECO-TOURISM MISSION AND HOW IT WAS BEGAN:

It all begun in Rubuguri south western Uganda, a small green heart in the remote corner of western Uganda with villages surrounding Bwindi and Mgahinga forests. Two forests mentioned here are prominent homes for more than half of the global healthy population of endangered Mountain Gorillas still living in the wild. Into this small mountain Gorilla’s world, we were born and raised here for all our life. Our enthusiasm to conservation is inborn and our passion for nature derived us towards the founding of Epic Gorilla Trails in Africa. The whole idea came after along time of witnessing the impacts of wildlife conservation laws to the local life styles and the way how tourism was being operated in the region. After many years of evictions and declaring local people’s entrance into forests illegal, people still had no alternative sources of basic needs hence going back into the forests looking for basic needs. This resulted into locals crushing with laws and regulations. Some local people ended up in courts while others are still serving the penalties in prisons. Wild animals live inside the well demarcated forest boundary but differences between animal’s feeding home ranges and forest boundaries still greatly exists. Wild animals freely cross and roam into village lands raiding crops, killing livestock and there has been reported cases of both Gorillas, lions etc and human deaths in the region adjacent to forests due to such wildlife-community collisions. Amidst all happenings, the dream for a well thought agenda for responsible tourism involving the locals is an answer to have a well-balanced eco-system that survives not just through laws and penalties, there is need for community awareness fostering local’s direct activism into wildlife conservation and management. For decades back, conservation laws were introduced and individual landscapes were too gazetted as National Parks. It’s unfortunate that while National parks were being gazetted in Africa people had to loose their lands with no compensation policies in place back in time. More families had to lose their land including the Batwa were evicted to pave away for effective mountain gorilla conservation in 1990. Later came in tourism business but still there are dark sides of the safaris trade as elsewhere in the world. We understand how tourism as aform of business can be threatening to wildlife, peoples and their cultures unless it is harmonized and regulated through best Eco-friendly operating approaches to benefit all the tourists and the host community while contributing sustainably into wildlife management principles to succeed.

RESPONSIBLE POLICIES TO OUR ESTEEMED SAFARI GOERS:

Our clients are our responsibility. Therefore as we look forward to offer meaningful safaris meant for an exciting lifetime memories, such trips must be very well packaged to reality, professionally led experience and we are obliged to tangible operating principles and commitments are made to all travelers i.e. providing an honest and accurate itineraries that are well defined to be well understood by every traveler. This is built on Epic Gorilla Trails core values, vision for excellence and well stipulated operating objectives. It’s our principle to provide balanced conversations of free, fair and unbiased information on every safari destinations, Companies, partners including governments and other stakeholders. We make sure every tourist is well prepared enough before the commencement of the trip to gain deep understanding of his or her safari itinerary. Epic Gorilla Trails offers all support to provide information on each safari destination, the routes, the lodgings, the activities, different cultures, what to expect and overall safari operating and bookings strategies. We stipulate and emphasize health and safety concerns plus wellbeing of our safari goers, we work to protect tourists from being harmed or harming others. We can’t forget to highlight to our travelers the pride of their individual participation in the designing of their personal itinerary.

OUR EMPHASIS TO GO-GREEN SAFARIS:

All our safaris are fused with Carbon-Neutral initiative to counteract the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that occur as a result of our daily operations like tree planting in Rubuguri town, in schools of Nombe and Iryaruvumba and alongside Rubuguri-Nkuringo road in collaboration with locals. Our drivers are reminded to minimize idling of vehicles in transit, during loading/unloading. When we have no business our vehicles are parked. While working and unpacking our lunch boxes all the trash must be put in trash bins well labeled and separated for biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes. While dealing with packages, only the use of environmentally friendly recyclable matter is recommended.
OUR RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL POLICY FOR AN ENRICHED TOURIST EXPERIENCE: Epic Gorilla Trails is a member of Green Traveling, we are Eco-aware and respect the local’s participation and existence. There is opposite for everything in the world and God had a good cause to plan the universe that way. Therefore we might be doing the best while achieving the reverse factors. We are community conscious while taking all our tourists and volunteers into the host community for the best experiences while avoiding misconception by following right procedures defined through our responsible travel policy. By following this responsible travel policy, we are hopeful to be achieving the best approach that will positively benefit not just the tourists and volunteer but the host community and every stakeholder involved.

RESPONSIBLE SOCIO-CULTURAL POLICIES:

This rotates on our host community, your safari experience will be nothing other than an album of photos and beautiful stories to share back home. The needs of our host community are placed at the center of our safaris operations and with our understanding of the host community enables us to engage into equal partnerships for balanced presentations. This must be identified by having mutual trust and respect of the Socio-Cultural responsibilities. We all work as a team to respect host communities and their values, attitudes and beliefs whilst encouraging every traveler to do the same with no act of violation and discrimination. Employing a local team has created an alternative sustainable income for many local communities in most of our safari destinations and to some extent we work and Support the development of local infrastructures like in community feeder roads, health care and education. Along our travel trails, we Work with local people to develop and train them in relevant and useful skills thus providing them with a sustainable future. On each safari booked, we aim at creating those life lasting trip memories while tourists gain a deeper understanding of the host regions and get that satisfaction surely the moneys spent for their safaris have directly benefitted the wildlife fraternity and the locals atlarge. This has been our safari niche to remain outstanding into the safari industry while we are not just operating to be environmentally friendly, satisfying the expectations of our clients but our safari platform is based on the whole integrated approach of social inclusion of local communities. In situations where more safari operators are just looking at the tourist curiosity and the need to get exposed to information, this form of tourism have denied more chances of visitor-local interactions which is a core pillar to live in harmony with Nature.

RESPONSIBLE POLICIES FOR OUR WILDLIFE AND THE GENERAL ENVIRONMENT:

All our safaris are conducted in highly biodiversity rich areas, we pay great concern in active participation for responsible ecotourism in regards to Wildlife watching while we work to achieve the most desired conservation strategies to conserve for generations while putting these natural resources into sustainable utilization. We do this by limiting the number of people in agroup to only six pax as we a void to put pressure on the animals’ behaviors and its home range. It’s our obligation to educate and train the local communities on effective and best methods of proper resource utilization to conserve and manage the Natural environment. Epic Gorilla Trails encourages each traveler to adopt environmentally friendly practices to succeed.

EPIC GORILLA TRAILS OPERATING RESPONSIBILITY AS AN ORGANIZATION:

We understand and believes in the responsibility we have for the animal welfare and people, we say that sustainable conservation cannot be just the need to focus on saving specific species from extinction. We pay attention to man and his environment for sustainable social and economic impacts.

OUR ECONOMIC RESPONSIBLE POLICIES:

Epic Gorilla Trails is a distinguished safari company standing in for the needed advocacy into wildlife conservation through Responsible travelling and partnerships. It’s our mandate that we work to achieve this status by applying economic responsibilities including working to create a local economy through safaris that employ locals, using local accommodation and sourcing food and products locally not from big towns but maintaining local supply chains. We make sure the cost of each tour is covered in advance and operating fees are paid directly to our respective local partners. In case of donations, we make sure these are given to the meant projects or charity and provide accurate and timely reports. With our bureaucracy meant for financial transparency, we keep records; provide breakdowns of every safari/project costs thus answering questions of how and where dues are spent.