Silverback is a documentary by wildlife cameraman, Vianet
Djenguet. The explores the themes surrounding the work of conservationists in
the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Congo and their aim to habituate eastern
lowland gorillas for tourism.
Through Vianet we are introduced to the dedicated rangers on
the ground, the scientist managers, and the gorillas themselves. Conservation
in Africa is difficult and complex, no one can deny the pressures on the local Congolese
people living in a war-torn country and often this brings them into conflict
with the local wildlife, poaching, and the bush meat trade are particularly
disturbing but as a country develops most damaging is the loss of primary forest
to make way for cattle, crops and development. The plan, which is already in
action, is to habituate gorilla families so that tourists can safely be taken
to view them. This tourist trade would provide valuable revenue to fund
conservation measures like protecting land and show the local people the value of
conserving wildlife around them.
Vianet joins the rangers for 3 months, during which they
spent each day with a family of gorillas led by a Silverback called Mpungwe.
Vianet started off wholly engaged in the project but slowly came to doubt the
merits of the initiative as the knowing doubt that was in the back of my mind
the whole time came to the fore.
There is considerable merit in the concept of involving
local people in the management of their natural resources and given that all
the people shown were from Congo exemplified this and removed any suggestion of
the ‘white west’ dictating what the former colonies now do in their own
country, but that is a whole other kettle of fish and a debate best saved for another
time and place.
Mpungwe was a somewhat aggressive gorilla, but perhaps no
more so than would be expected from someone who had lost his parents violently
and is disturbed each day by a camera crew, and, here is the crux of habituation,
the individual needs to be receptive and have the correct temperament. Mpungwe
was not the first gorilla to be habituated, there had been successes elsewhere in
the Congo but he seemed wholly unpredictable and unsettled by the whole affair
for the techniques to be effective. Whilst there did seem to be some progress,
a begrudging tolerance perhaps, Mpungwe seemed unable or perhaps more accurately unwilling to totally accept the presence of humans around his family.
To persevere with the attempts at habituation, which is where the programme left us, risks causing Mpungwe more stress. Doctors live by the Hippocratic Oath, to first do no harm something that Ecologists and scientists should also live by even if it isn't codified in the same way.
Towards the end of the film Vianet seemed to be having second doubts, he acknowledged Mpungwe's discomfort and wondered if this was too high a price to pay. It's a valid point just as the technique of habituation is for tourism, but there is certainly an ethical line that needs to be explored. All of us need to rationalise how far we should go to safeguard a species. How far is too far and who decides?
I am uncomfortable with the concept of habituation, for me, it leads to a change in natural behaviour and desensitising a creature to man can be dangerous, this is less of a problem in this country with my deer per se but where active hunting is a problem then it could be deadly. For my deer I want them to remain wild, and whilst some habituation makes it possible for me to observe them closer and get some great pictures anymore would be unjust and unfair, for Mpungwe it is much more complex, the rangers of Kahuzi-Beiga are trying to save a species and in the modern world that requires compromise.
