 It is in that location. For those of you who have not been there, and this is how it looks like. The great ape habitats are those being pointed at. They are found in the western part of the country, in the National Parks and Wildlife Reserves. But there are some groups of chimpanzees that find themselves in private forest patches in the western part of the country. But these are not significant corporations. Uganda is very small compared to other big countries. 84% of it is land and 15% is water. And 10% of this is gazetted as wildlife conservation areas. 24 as forest reserves. And 13 are wetlands. In terms of biological diversity, given its smaller size, Uganda is highly diverse in terms of species. With 18,783 so far recorded species. And as science grows more and more species will certainly be discovered. Yeah, the great apes found in Uganda are the mountain gorillas, the chimpanzees, and of course, our slaves. So it is actually a problem when I am discussing the linkage. It is a poverty in terms of who, because these other apes can also claim that it should be the other way around. It can be the reverse. So, but for purposes of this presentation, I will consider the mountain gorillas and the chimpanzees as the great apes. And then selfishly, I will consider the poverty of mankind. That is how selfish man is. And we must learn to proceed as such. The context in which I'm using the word apes has been given there. I will be particularly referring to the mountain gorillas and chimpanzees because these are the apes which are found in Uganda with the exception of human beings. And towards my referring to activities, services, and industries that collectively deliver travel experience. You must have realized from the previous speaker that poverty has no conventional definition and indeed there is none. And so I will limit my expressions to mean inability to acquire the best goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. That will be the context in which I will be using the word poverty. I will start with opportunities. Later on I go to limitations and then I end up with lessons. So opportunities, the single biggest opportunity that we must talk about when we talk about great apes conservation and tourism is the ecological services that come with the great apes conservation. You find that the habitats for great apes are also, they happen to be rain forests for the case of gorillas, for example, and chimpanzees in Ibuindi. This is an impenetrable forest that is a catchment area for the surrounding communities. So it provides the water, pollination, and very many other ecological services which are very critical for the survival of the agricultural lands that neighbor these habitats. So in a way, if you promote great apes tourism, the benefits will make it possible to conserve this habitat and in turn this habitat will provide the ecological services to the people and they will increase the natural capital of the people which is poverty reduction because if we are looking at the poverty dimension, the natural capital is a very, very big component of poverty. If you gave people money without these ecological services, there would be no survival. The other opportunity is direct income to government. Gorilla tracking generates direct money to government and the chimpanzee tracking also generates money to government. As you can see that it track a mountain gorilla in a day, you will be part with 500 US dollars and the chimp will attract around 150 US dollars. There are some other tourism packages that attract much more money. For example, the habituation experience, all of these provide direct income to government and government-being people. This in turn provides provision of public services including medical facilities, roads, which are components of poverty alleviation, education, name it. It is worth noting that 100% of the direct revenue generated from great apatowism in Uganda is plowed back into conservation work and is retained at the conservation agency level to provide funds for conservation of wildlife as a whole beyond the great apatowism. So you can see that great apatowism has an opportunity to generate funds that will ensure survival of other wildlife species and habitats beyond the great apatowism service. In direct income to government in Uganda, tourism is the second largest foreign exchange honor for the country. And as such, great apatowism is a very significant component of tourism as a whole in Uganda. In fact, the mountain gorillas, the mountain gorillas are referred to as the kingpin of Uganda's tourism. So these foreign exchange earnings, of course, is very, very important for the economy. Needless to say that the great apatowism provides also indirect income to government in a way of taxes on goods and services in the tourism sector and the general contribution to GDP as a measure of poverty reduction. Employment opportunities which in turn provide increased household incomes and of course, thereby reducing poverty in Uganda, there are over 268,000 enterprises engaged in tourism-related businesses as of last year with 200 companies registered as tour operators. And in Uganda, if you're a tour operator and you don't have a great ap package, most probably you are not a significant tour operator. So great apatowism influences these jobs. Of course, the conservation agencies also provide the employment opportunities. In order to maintain that great apatowism, you need personnel on the ground. And Uganda Wildlife Authority alone employs 1,300 permanent staff. This is just one organization because you must have people on the ground, you must have tour guides, you must have enforcement officers on the ground, all these things generate income and employment to the local people. In all 80,000 people, I expected approximately, I expected to be employed in the tourism, great apatowism of a new chain in Uganda. There are various lodges and camps which also employ people as chiefs, and then there is guiding. And of recent, there is what we call potters, the people who carry bags for tours and they climb. You know the terrain where these great apes are found is a little bit challenging. So you need somebody to carry your bag and this generates direct household income at the local level because these are a preserve of the local people that live near the protected areas. There is great opportunities in terms of market for locally produced goods and services. So great apatowism provides a very big potential to the agriculture sector in the area in terms of the things which the tourists will use at hotel level during transport. And so you can say that great apatowism is a very, very big market for the locally produced goods ranging from food, crafts, you know, among others. There is a revenue sharing program in Uganda which is statutory. 20% of all gate entries collected from any protected area in Uganda is supposed to go directed to the local people that come from a parish neighboring that protected area. And so the parks in which the apes live generate direct income to the local people in terms of the revenue sharing program. There is also another scheme called the gorilla levy whereby every permit, every gorilla permit sold, there is a levy that goes to the local people which are neighboring that protected area where the gorillas were tracked from. Currently each gorilla permit sold five dollars go directed to the gorilla levy. And then when it accumulates, it is disbursed to the local people to support public good projects and a livelihood improvement projects at the local level. There is this whole thing of integrated conservation and development projects which are associated with great conservation. Right from the days of care, as far back as 1991, when great tourism was being started in Uganda, a lot of integrated conservation and development projects were put in place and they are still continuing to be in place. You can see a community hospital you must have heard about, I heard somebody talk about the Glandis Kalema. There is a community hospital which was started particularly to offer services to bridge the gap between the great ape health and the community population health because these being close relatives, there is a potential for diseases to cross. And so this was particularly dedicated to that. The hospital offers services to the former forest-dwearing people called the pyjamas. And initially it was meant to serve that but has turned into a very, very big hospital that is even far better than government hospitals around and it has become a very, very developed health facility. They are school projects. You can see this is a community lodge which was started as a pilot case study in order to generate the direct benefits to the local people. So a seed grant was given to the local people neighboring Bginden Penetravo National Park. And so they got in touch with a private partner, a professional tourism business manager to help manage the lodge. And everybody who sleeps in that lodge, a percentage of the bed night goes back to the local communities. There is a second one also. This one is for Bginden also, Bukhoma Park, those of you who have been there. This is in the Nkuri-Ingo area, part of Chisoro district. And this is in another location, but of the same model also. It is a community managed tourism facility where the tourism benefits go directed into community projects. In terms of social capital, great apiturism has potential to empower the marginalized groups. These are the former forest dwellers, as you can see, who have been developed into a tourism product called the Batua trade, the Pyjames trade. So these are trained to showcase their culture to tourists who come to visit great apes. And so in a way they generate income and they are empowered. Security, everywhere where there is great apiturism, you will realize that there must be security because security is an integral part of tourism. So without great apiturism, who knows, these would be habitats for rebels as there is in other areas. So this is a very, very, very big poverty reduction impact where there is in security, you can never fight poverty there. There are other indirect opportunities which come along with tourism growth, including infrastructure growth, international linkages. There is a lot of ongoing student exchange programs which students are identified when it was visited, these local sites, and then they link schools in their source countries with schools at great apes sites. And so there is knowledge and technology transfer and social capital buildup which greatly reduces poverty. Like previous speakers have said, of course, there is no opportunity that comes without limitation and so they are negative on great apiturism. It has been already mentioned that there is even a distribution of opportunities where the elites tend to capture these opportunities thereby the poor remaining poor. And then of course, habitation of these great apes have potential to increase the home ranges of great apes and also the loss of fear of humans can greatly enhance human-wide life conflicts because they will come out of protected areas. There is high community revenue expectations. What seems to come out from revenue sharing much as it is tangible, but it's not enough, the expectations have been set high. We still see poaching, though not targeting great apes, but of course great apes end up dying as an targeted species. And the needless to say that there are direct potential negative impacts from tourism activities, diseases, scabies have been reported in mountain gorillas, stress and behavior change and change in home ranges. These have been scientifically proven, but interventional measures have been put in place in terms of health monitoring and also following the tourism gorillas rules. Great apiturism leads to the high cost of living in the sites where tourism takes place. And of course, this further impoverishes the local people on site. If a kilogram of meat was selling at $500 or $50 US say, with great apiturism, it will go to $100. This will make the poor, the people more poor because they can't afford the life. And of course, they will not be, they are not going to migrate to other areas to run away from that cost of living. So that's a big impact, I think. You will realize that tourism, of course, brings in more people. So it increases on human population in these sites because there will be concentration of activities. And so there will be ecological footprint. Lessons learned, we've learned from, as we've been having great apiturism, that benefit sharing is an effective tool for positive conservation attitude. This has been a standard and there is evidence. We've also learned that collaborative management of protected areas is a high cost effective conservation tool. However, low enforcement should always be blended. It's not enough to say the people are aware and there is a stronger collaborative management effort and therefore that enforcement should be relaxed now. It should be an integrated kind of approach to managing of these resources. And I can confidently conclude that well-moderated ecotourism, great ecotourism is an effective conservation tool and a poverty reduction approach only if it is well-moderated. I thank you very much for listening to me.