Updated
When you meet a gorilla family in Bwindi after an hour or two of walking, it can feel like luck. It isn’t, and it isn’t a radio collar either. Uganda’s habituated mountain gorillas are not fitted with GPS or radio tracking devices. They are found every morning by teams of trackers who read the forest, a method that has worked since tourism began in 1993.
Why gorillas aren’t collared
Fitting a collar means darting and anaesthetising a wild gorilla, which carries a real risk of injury or death, and a collar can rub, snag on vegetation or be pulled off by other group members. For a population of only about 1,000 mountain gorillas, those risks are not worth taking when skilled people can do the job without touching the animals. Uganda Wildlife Authority and its partners therefore rely on non-invasive methods: daily observation, nose prints and photographs to tell individuals apart, and genetic analysis of dung for census work.
How trackers find a family each morning
Advance trackers leave early, often before trekkers have finished their briefing, and walk to the place where they left the family the previous evening. From there they find the night nests, which gorillas build fresh every night, and follow the trail the group took when it moved off: flattened vegetation, broken stems, half-eaten wild celery and fresh dung. The amount of dung in the nests and its freshness also tell them how long ago the gorillas left. When they reach the family, they radio the ranger-guide leading your group with directions, which is why your trek can change course halfway.
Where technology does come in
Technology supports this work rather than replacing it. Trackers and rangers carry handheld GPS units to record where each family was seen, building up records of home ranges and movements over years. Patrols log snares and other threats on standardised ranger-monitoring software, and researchers use camera traps and monitoring technology to study shy wildlife and unhabituated areas. Radios and phones connect trackers, guides and park headquarters. None of it involves putting devices on the gorillas themselves.
What this means for your trek
Because trackers usually reach the family before you set off or soon after, sightings on a standard trek are close to certain, though the walk can be anything from 30 minutes to several hours depending on where the gorillas fed overnight. If you want to see the tracking skills for yourself, the Gorilla Habituation Experience lets you spend the day with researchers and trackers following a family that is still being habituated. Ask your guide about the signs they read on the way. Most enjoy explaining it.
Learn more
Find out more about the guides and trackers who make every trek possible, how gorilla families are named and identified, and the work of Gorilla Doctors.
Frequently asked questions
No. Uganda’s habituated mountain gorillas are not collared; trackers locate them each day.
Trackers return to where the family was the evening before, find the night nests and follow the trail of feeding signs and dung.
Not formally, but because trackers locate the families daily, standard treks almost always find their group.
Handheld GPS for recording locations, ranger patrol software, camera traps for other wildlife and dung DNA for census counts.
