Meet the Women Who Lead Gorilla Trekking in Uganda Today

The face of gorilla trekking in Uganda has changed — the rangers who track families before dawn, the guides who brief visitor groups each morning, and the lodge managers who run operations in Bwindi’s most remote sectors are increasingly women who chose this work deliberately, in a field that previously offered them almost no entry points. This shift matters beyond representation: research in community conservation consistently shows that female rangers and guides report poaching faster, build stronger relationships with surrounding communities, and retain positions longer than the industry average. The Bwindi sector guide covers the park they protect, and the gorilla families they track.

Gorilla trekking in Uganda was, for most of its history, a profession led almost entirely by men. The rangers, guides, trackers, and lodge managers who built the industry from its beginnings in the 1990s were overwhelmingly male. In 2027, that picture has changed significantly — not completely, but enough to tell a different story about who leads gorilla trekking experiences in Uganda and what that change means for the quality of the sector. This post profiles the women who are now at the forefront of gorilla tourism in Uganda, from trackers to lodge operators to conservation officers.

Why Gender Diversity in Guiding Matters

Research on wildlife tourism guiding consistently finds that diverse guide teams produce better outcomes: more varied interpretive styles, better coverage of different trekker needs, and stronger community representation. Solo-gender guiding teams also create self-reinforcing exclusion — when all guides are male, female job-seekers see no evidence that the profession is open to them and do not apply. Breaking that cycle requires deliberate recruitment and mentorship investment.

There is also a specific case for female guides in gorilla trekking: some trekkers — particularly women travelling solo or in pairs — describe feeling more comfortable and cared for by female guides who naturally adapt their communication style to address different emotional responses to the encounter. This is not a universal preference, but it is a preference that many women have expressed in post-trek surveys, and it represents a service quality argument for gender diversity beyond the equity case.

Harriet Birungi: The Pioneer

No profile of women in Uganda’s gorilla trekking sector begins anywhere other than Harriet Birungi, the first certified female gorilla tracker in Bwindi. Harriet’s story — how she completed tracker training top of her cohort, built a 15-year safety record, won consistent client satisfaction ratings above any male colleague in her sector, and became a mentor to the next generation of female trackers — is told in detail in a companion post on this site. In 2027, she leads treks in the Rushaga sector and continues to mentor female tracker trainees through the UWA programme.

Grace Tumwesigye: Conservation Officer and Community Bridge

Grace Tumwesigye, UWA’s community liaison officer for the Rushaga sector, represents a different but equally important form of leadership in gorilla tourism. Her work — managing the community relationships that determine whether conservation succeeds or fails — is not visible to most tourists, but it shapes every aspect of the environment they encounter. Grace’s story is also told in detail in a companion post on this site. Her trajectory from orphan in a forest-edge village to UWA conservation officer is one of the most compelling in the sector.

Sarah Nakamya: Lodge Manager and Tourism Entrepreneur

Sarah Nakamya manages a mid-range lodge in the Buhoma sector that she co-founded with her husband in 2017 after 10 years working in hospitality in Kampala. She chose to return to the Bwindi area — where she grew up — specifically to build a tourism business that employed community members and contributed to the local economy. By 2027, her lodge employs 22 staff, of whom 14 are women, and sources over 80 percent of its food supply from local farmers. She chairs the Buhoma Tourism Operators Association and has been the leading voice for standardising guide training and community benefit contributions across operators in the area.

Sarah’s vision of tourism is explicitly economic development focused. “Tourism is not charity,” she says. “It is an industry. When it is run well, it creates jobs, builds skills, and generates tax revenue. When it is run badly, it extracts money from communities without giving anything back. My job is to make sure the lodge I run belongs to the first category — not just because I believe in it, but because lodges that behave well build the long-term trust that tourism depends on.”

Immaculate Kyomuhendo: Researcher and Gorilla Demographer

Immaculate Kyomuhendo is a Ugandan wildlife researcher specialising in mountain gorilla demography. She has worked with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Uganda Wildlife Authority on population monitoring programmes in Bwindi since 2016. In 2027 she co-authors the annual mountain gorilla population census that is the authoritative measure of how gorilla conservation is performing. She is one of fewer than five Ugandan nationals with specialist expertise in gorilla population ecology at PhD level, and one of only two who are women.

Immaculate’s research informs decisions about habituation of new gorilla families, ranger patrol allocation, and veterinary intervention protocols. Her work does not appear in any tourism brochure, but it is the scientific foundation on which the entire gorilla trekking sector rests. When the census reports that Bwindi’s gorilla population has grown, that report is partly hers.

What This Means for the Future of Gorilla Trekking

The women profiled here are not exceptions to the rule of a male-dominated sector. They are evidence that the rule is changing. By 2027, women lead gorilla tracking, lodge management, community conservation, and gorilla science in Uganda. They are building the institutional knowledge and professional networks that will shape the next generation of the sector. When you trek gorillas in Uganda in 2027, there is a significant chance that the experience you have will be shaped, in some part, by a woman’s professional contribution — even if you never see her name on a brochure.