UNESCO ON GORILLA CONSERVATION

Roles and duties of United Nations Educational, scientific and cultural organization in Africa:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 to help promoting education, science, culture and communication.  As far as tourism is concerned, UNESCO was set to promote, protect or conserve wildlife and financing their well being.

Being a United nations agency, UNESCO is also assigned to keep, finance and launch new World heritage sites- It also ranks places to world Heritage positions. Rwanda is endowed with a number of world Heritage sites but the major ones include, Akagera National Park (the home of wildlife), Volcanoes National Park (Home of mountain Gorillas), Nyungwe Forest National Park (Home of exciting chimpanzees), Genocide memorial museums ( Gisozi, Nyamata, Murambi, Ntarama etc).

On the side of mountain Gorillas, UNESCO helps in monitoring African Gorillas including those hosted by Rwanda- Volcanoes National Park. More so, the agency helps in protecting the habitat of mountain Gorillas.

UNESCO also monitors the World Heritage sites using space technology, mainly Earth observation satellites. United Nations Educational, scientific and cultural Organisation aims at expanding the sources of data that contribute to an integrated World Heritage database, assisting the countries involved in improving the monitoring of World Heritage sites.

The intention is to create a new remote-sensing unit inside the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, as well as a virtual network of co-operating entities, and to increase the capabilities in the areas of remote sensing and monitoring within State Parties, mainly in developing countries, will be enhanced.

To test and select which space technologies are most appropriate for monitoring purposes
To demonstrate to both UNESCO Member States and the international community the feasibility of using advanced tools.
To define the most adequate institutional and technical framework - such as the needs in human and project resources and the roles of the different partners.

The pilot project is likely to be expanded to cover selected World Heritage sites - both natural and cultural heritage sites. Fortunately, Mountain and Low land Gorillas earns the nations a lot of foreign exchange. African countries which are gifted with gorillas include Uganda- gorillas are found in Bwindi impenetrable forest and Mgahinga national park, Democratic Republic of Congo -Virunga National Park, Rwanda - Volcanoes national Park, Angola, Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Central African republic. It should be noted that among the ten African countries endowed with gorillas, only Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo have Mountain Gorillas while others with Low land Gorillas.

Mountain gorillas are those found in mountainous  regions and survives better in mountains while low lands are found in areas with low altitude but survives better in Low lands. Another point to note is that, mountain gorillas are more attractive, rare and most liked than low land gorillas.