Full transcript between Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka and our Authors on Climate Words host and Climate Books coordinator, Rebecca Gerny. This conversation was recorded in person in Uganda on February 19, 2024.

Rebecca: So thank you so much for having me here, Dr. Gladys. We're at your office for Conservation Through Public Health in Entebbe. This is the first in-person interview for Authors on Climate words, so thank you for having me. So yeah, I just guess I wanted to start with just having you introduce yourself in your own words. Kind of how would you describe the work that you do and how did you come to be doing this work?

Dr. Gladys: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very excited to be on this podcast, Climate Words. I'm Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, founder and CEO of a grassroots NGO and non-profit, Conservation Through Public Health. We promote biodiversity conservation by enabling people to coexist with gorillas and other wildlife, through improving the health of the animals, the health of the people, and the livelihoods of the local communities.

I'm a wildlife veterinarian. I was the first wildlife vet in Uganda, setting up the vet unit in Uganda Wildlife Authority.

Rebecca: The very first one.

Dr. Gladys: Yes, the first wildlife vet in Uganda. Very exciting first job from vet school. And so I've been working with gorillas for quite a long time. I would say now 28 years, if I start with when I went out as a vet student doing research in 1994. And then in 1996, I was hired as the first vet for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. And then in 2003, we founded Conservation Through Public Health. And since then, we've founded a couple of other social enterprises. And I look forward to talking to you about them.

Rebecca: Yeah, so maybe you could just start by telling me a little bit about your entry into this field and what first kind of got you interested in wildlife and conservation when you were starting your degree.

Dr. Gladys: And what got me interested in wildlife and conservation is I got an opportunity to set up a wildlife club at my high school in Uganda, and that was a big turning point in my life. It was very exciting. I volunteered at the Wildlife Club offices before I started A-level in Uganda. And I used to go there and they used to get me to try and do things, but I didn't know a lot about wildlife. So then when I started in a new high school and they wanted to revive the wildlife club, the biology teacher spoke to the wildlife club officers and said, “I want to start a wildlife club.” They're like, this student in your school who's very interested in wildlife, why didn't you get her to do it? So he came up to me and said, start a wildlife club. I was so excited. So I ended up just doing that and I didn't study and I ended up not getting the grades I needed to get into med school.But later on I did.

But what touched me was when we went to the National Park to visit. We took the students to Queen Elizabeth National Park, which is one of the first three national parks created in Uganda in the 50s. I was expected to see a lot of wild animals, but I was disappointed that we found very few wild animals. There were no predators, no lions or leopards. The elephants had kind of gone to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo because there had been lots of poaching in the national park. And so it was a bit sad.Shortly after Idi Amin had been outstayed by the Tanzanian government, the Tanzanian army. So it was a bit sad. And I kind of thought to myself, why don't I become a vet who also brings about the wildlife? We even did walking safaris because we wouldn't get eaten by any animal. It was quite exciting. But I just thought to myself, I want to be a vet because I grew up with many pets at home as a child. And I thought, why don't I be a vet who also works with wildlife? So that seed was planted in my mind.

And then I got an opportunity to study at the Royal Vet College in the University of London, which is one of the best veterinary colleges in the world. And they also gave me an opportunity to work with animals of my choice. They gave all of us an opportunity. And so in the holidays whenever I came to Uganda I’d try and work with the wildlife. So my first opportunity was working with chimpanzees at the Entebbe Zoo which is over 70 years old now. And those chimps were not there as a collection. They came because they're orphaned. It had actually become an animal orphanage. So they were victims of the bushmeat trade. The mothers are killed for food in neighboring DRC and then the babies end up in Uganda because people buy them because they feel sorry for them and then they end up at the zoo.

So we looked after those really adorable babies. And I learnt a lot about primates because they used to escape from the cages. They were very naughty, they’d open the fence and run around the zoo and then you have to carry them back to bring them in and they love being hugged, they miss their mamas. And then at the same time I thought the bush me trade is really devastating the wildlife. And it was being managed by the Jane Goodall Institute, those particular chimpanzees were being sponsored by the Jane Goodall Institute. So I got to learn about her work and got very inspired by her.

And I got to meet her when I was in London at the Royal Vet College. I went to her talks. Then later on I got to work with wild chimpanzees in Budongo Forest under Professor Vernon Reynolds. And that was really exciting because it was my first time working with wild animals. And I was looking at parasites in their fecal samples. And that was their first study on that. So that was fun.

And then after that, two years later, I got to finally work with the manta gorillas in Bwindi that I'd heard about while setting up the wildlife club, but they hadn't yet been habituated. And that was amazing. And that was a life-changing moment as well because I saw the threats the gorillas were facing. First of all, it was a very hard edge. You drive and then you get to a point and it's a very hard edge between the community and the park. And I could see that their habitat was really being lost. And there were only two habituated gorilla groups for tourism and one for research. And sometimes we'd even track the habituated gorilla groups in community land. We'd visit them in community land.

And I was also collecting fecal samples from their night nests, looking at parasites and bacteria to see if they have their own and they're picking up some from the local community or from tourists things like that. And that was a very interesting study for me, because also being based at the tourist site, I got to see how tourism is supporting conservation. So it was a great lesson in conservation medicine for a vet student. And at the end of it, I felt the gorillas are threatened by our human diseases.

Also because when I arrived, I got really sick. I had a bad flu and I couldn't visit them for a week, which was really annoying because I only had four weeks to do the study. But then by the time I got better, I realized we really can make these animals sick and we shouldn't visit, you know, we're a great threat to them, but also an opportunity.

And so by the end of it, I felt like why don't I become a full-time wildlife vet? Because there are only about 600 mountain gorillas left in the whole world. We weren't sure how many were in Uganda. And I just felt, why don't I become a full-time wildlife vet? So that's how it happened.

I sent my report to the executive director of the Uganda National Parks, Dr. Eric Edroma, and I told him this is what a vet does in wildlife. I want to be your first vet. And surprisingly, he wrote back to me after a couple of months and said, your job is waiting for you. I was like, what? And so that was very exciting. So when I told my friends at vet school and my lecturers, they were like, were shocked. Because you know there are very few wildlife vets in the world and normally you have to have had so much training and specialization before you do it. But they gave me a lot of support, everyone gave me a lot of support and I started this exciting journey.

Rebecca: Yeah and I'm just wondering, most of our listeners are probably not as familiar with the Ugandan context of conservation and wildlife and I'm just curious what was that like starting the whole veterinary part of wildlife protection? In the Ugandan context before that, can you just maybe give us a little explanation of what conservation looked like before you started? And what is the role of a wildlife vet in that kind of position?

Dr. Gladys: Yeah, when I first started out everybody, you know, knew that wild animals are supposed to be left on their own. You're not supposed to touch them, because it's all about natural selection. That's what you're taught in conservation biology. And that's correct. You want the strongest animal to take over the group, to be the one that breeds. Like with gorillas, for example, it's normally the dominant silverback who mates with the females. So of course, you want the strongest genes to continue in the population, whether it's gorillas, lions, elephants, any species. So everybody was in the thought of natural selection. The weak animal should be taken out of the group. The limping warthog is the next meal for the lion. The older animal should be taken out by the predators.

Rebecca: Humans shouldn't intervene and save a weak animal.

Dr. Gladys: Humans should not touch the wildlife. So when I came in I'm like, I remember people thinking, what's a vet doing here? But luckily the person who hired me, Dr. Droma, he knew what he wanted a vet to do. At least we kind of agreed on what I should be doing. The biggest issue was educating everybody else about what I'm supposed to be doing. You know, so I did spend quite a lot of time telling them this is what a vet does. I didn't even have equipment or anything to use. They just gave me a desk.

And I'm like, chimpanzees have snares, I have to go and remove them. You know, in Kibale National Park. I ended up working with a vet from Rwanda, Dr. Jonathan Sleeman, and also the Taronga Zoo. There was Debbie who was working, helping to develop the chimpanzee sanctuaries in Uganda. So I ended up having to work with other vets who had that equipment. Then I had to start fundraising on my own. I finally got a donation from the gorilla organization in London.

So it was a lot of fundraising for my equipment, because they didn’t quite know what a vet does. They don't just give advisory services, they actually go out and treat the wild animals. And knowing which ones should we concentrate on, the endangered species more than the ones which are plentiful because the resources are so few. And if it's human related or life threatening is what we decided is a criteria for all animals, especially the mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, you know. And so it was a lot of educating people. And then Dr. Droma said to me, I want you to move elephants. And I was like, wow.

Rebecca: This story was crazy - all of the stories in your book. I'd encourage everyone to read it. But yeah

Dr. Gladys: Yeah moving animals. I just thought I was not used to dealing with moving five ton animals, but let me see what I can do. And luckily Kenya Wildlife Service was moving elephants, so I got training there, came back and we moved the ones in Uganda - a huge feat. Got all the media involved and they're like, “Wow, you can move elephants.” And we worked with an animal capture expert from Zimbabwe and so that really helped. He was the person who, he was just amazing, he was an amazing director, he kind of had a vision for what the vet unit should be, and we just worked together closely to make sure that vision happens. And my immediate boss, Captain Nuttekat, was also extremely supportive.

But it was like, you know, people tell you, like the first gorilla that I had to handle, the first case, they said to me, “oh.” I went to visit the gorillas just to check on them, and I'm like, so where's Mogurusi, the eldest Silverback from this group? They're like, “Oh, he's not keeping up with the group anymore.” I said, “so why didn't you call me?” So then we went out and started looking for him and we found him. He was on his own, walking really slowly and it turned out that he had grown really old and he just couldn't keep up with the group. And I tried to give him some antibiotics but it was almost too late. He was just very slow. And then I said to them, “if anything happens to him, let me know.” So, you know, even if I gave him long acting penicillin, I kind of didn't think he would last very long. And two days later, they called me and said he's died. And so, but they said, “but you don't have to come over because he's died of old age.” And I'm like, but we need to know what caused the death. We may think it's just old age, but there could be something else that's affecting him and all the other gorillas in his group. We need to build information on why gorillas are dying. So I came over, did the post-mortem, of course there was a large crowd watching me as it is in Uganda.

Rebecca: Always.

Dr. Gladys: And the Peace Corps volunteer took notes and I had a vet from Makerere University who had worked in Rwanda before with gorillas who came and we just took our time, it took six hours. You don't normally take six hours to do a post-mortem on a gorilla, but we just took our time, which is good. We wrote a good report, but it turned out that he had renal failure, kidney failure, with mild heart failure. So it was more a type of thing somebody who's elderly ends up dying from in humans as well.

And so I wrote a report about it, gave it to my supervisors in the Wildlife Authority, my bosses. And so when the journalists were coming around looking for stories, he handed in the report and it appeared in the newspaper. And everybody was like “Wow, you do post mortems on wild animals? And they have the same diseases like us?” So it raised appreciation for gorillas. And then I think from there everybody started realizing veterinary care is important in wildlife.

And then the next disease was the scabies outbreak which was another turning point in my life. They sent me a message, the Peace Corps volunteer Karen sent a message saying the gorillas are losing hair and developing white scaly skin. And I thought that's really odd so I contacted the vets in Rwanda that had had a veterinary unit going for many years, which the late Dr. Diane Fossey requested before she died, and they had never seen scabies in the gorillas there.

And then I spoke to a human doctor friend of mine. They had never seen a disease like that. So I spoke to a doctor friend of mine and said, “what's the most common skin disease in people in Uganda?” And she said scabies, which I found surprising because at vet college, you rarely picked up, people didn't get mange in the UK because it's a disease of low income groups of people with less than adequate hygiene. And sometimes you'd pick up mange from your cat or dog occasionally, but it wouldn't last for long. And so I thought, okay, well, if it's mange or scabies, one dose of ivermectin works well in animals, so this would be better for gorillas. You can dart them with ivermectin and it's enough. It's not going to disrupt their behavior.

I luckily was going up there with a vet from Kenya, who happened to be in Uganda to help us to evaluate the veterinary needs for the Wildlife Authority. And he had worked with cheetahs in Masai Mara, and seen scabies in the cheetahs. And those visited by many tour vehicles were stressed. So we thought if it's scabies, it could be because these gorillas are getting stressed.

The particular group that had it were only four now and six tourists were visiting four gorillas. The others had left and gone to Congo and other places because there were too many males, so the bachelors broke off.

So we went there open-minded. Dr. Liz McPhee who was setting up the International Gorilla Conservation Program in Uganda, is a vet. She was a vet in Rwanda but she wasn't feeling well that day so she couldn't come with us. So we went up with Richard, Dr. Richard Cook.

So when we got up there we did find that he looked like scabies and we treated the gorillas. And actually we happened to have two vets from St. Louis. One was the head vet for St. Louis Zoo, Dr. Eric Miller and his partner, who's a small animal veterinarian, and small animal vets see lots and lots of scabies cases. So we told them, they happen to be tourists and Richard recognized them, which is really good. So we said to them, “After your tourist visit, don't go away, stay behind and come and help us with the intervention.”

Rebecca: I'm sure they loved that.

Dr. Gladys: Oh yeah, he even put it up at the zoo and he was so excited. But it was good to have these three experts helping me. And everybody agreed it looked like scabies so we gave that particular gorilla which we mobilized, the juvenile casigasi, ivermectin and then came back later the next day and treated all the others. But unfortunately the baby gorilla was too far gone and died. So when we did a fresh post-mortem at Makerere, the mice were still alive and the baby was dead. So we began to ask, where did this come from? Progressively people started realizing that, okay they probably picked up from dirty clothing and scarecrows that people put out to chase away gorillas and other wildlife. But they also have other unhygienic habits. There's open defecation. They don't cover the rubbish heaps. They don't bathe that often because it's quite far to get water, as much as it's a rainforest but the river is deep down, so they don't bathe that often. So there's all these hygiene issues.

So people sat down, me being the only vet in the organization, and said we want you to do some health education workshops. They assumed I have more health, public health information, which I do, you know vet public health is like human public health. So I was like, okay. So then I took up that challenge and I developed some material and got a local designer in Kampala to do very nice very simple images of things.

Then now it was time to go to the community, something which I never used to do. So I had to work with a different department in the Wildlife Authority. I was used to working with the tourism rangers and the law enforcement rangers and now I'm working with community conservation rangers which was interesting for me, I'd been there for like four years by that time. So we went with the community conservation ranger and warden. We also had to bring in, they said we had to bring in the district health assistance because we're talking about health issues. So we went to the villages where gorillas are always coming out, because they know those places where they’re like, “A gorilla has come out. And help, they're eating my crops.” So we focused on those high conflict villages.

Rebecca: And that's mostly habituated gorillas that will leave the park?

Dr. Gladys: Yes

Rebecca: So once they're already familiar with humans because of tourism, then they leave the park and they might interact with local communities more often?

Dr. Gladys: Yeah they lose their fear of people because they go back to where they used to range before their habitat was cut. You know the forest was cut and now they've lost their fear of people and they go back to places that used to be their home. Some of these places are community gardens and then they pick up diseases from there.

So we met over a thousand people in eight villages. And it was really interesting because I went there with, “this is the problem” and a flip chart and I was like “this is the solution” and the ranger touched my arm and said “wait, let's see what they have to say.” And their solutions were way better than what I was proposing for them. They actually knew, I was humbled but also excited, that they understood what we had told them, first of all. And the issues that were brought up, that we thought were an issue, they agreed with us, and they had even better ways of resolving it than we have. And so that was my first introduction to participatory rural appraisal. And a lot of what they proposed is what we used to start the nonprofit a few years later. You know, I didn't realize that they didn't have health services close by. And they're like, “we want services to be brought closer.

When someone is sick they carry them on a stretcher for 20 miles to the nearest health center. So many people just don't make it to the modern doctor, they just go to the traditional healer who can only treat so many diseases, but especially the highly infectious ones, they're not able to treat like scabies, tuberculosis, HIV. So it was a big eye-opener. They also said they wanted more and more of this health education, not just a one-off like we did. They wanted more education. We did give out brochures in the local language that they could pin up in their houses.

And then the third thing that they said is strengthen the human gorilla conflict resolution team that herds gorillas back when they come out. Give them more food rations, raincoats, gumboots, so they're more motivated.

Rebecca: And those are members of the community as well right? Not the UWA.

Dr. Gladys: They're members of the community. And so it was really amazing. I just went away thinking why don't we start an NGO to address these issues. Then I left the wildlife authority like a few months later because I had got an opportunity to study in America and do a Zoo

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medicine residency at North Carolina State University at the zoo. And during that time we founded CTPH. Yeah so that was really exciting.

Yeah I did classes at Duke University als, a certificate in nonprofit management and came back three years later and founded CTPH. But I used to come back during the holidays. And I did a study, it also kind of influenced the master's research I did. Having got some support from the African Wildlife Foundation through the Charlotte Conservation Fellowship. Through their Charlotte Conservation Fellowship Fund, they were supporting me to do tuberculosis research at the Human-Wildlife-Livestock interface.

So I went and I took samples from buffalo and cattle and people. I got to understand the human side of things because I went with the local health people to take samples from people, both at Bwindi and Queen Elizabeth National Park. In Bwindi there was no test for gorillas, but we were concerned that if they picked up tuberculosis, it would be impossible because you'd have to treat them every day for eight months. They’d de-habituate and they'd stop. You wouldn't be able to visit them anymore after a couple of weeks. So it was better to really prevent it. So we looked at TB in rangers and also community members where the gorillas come out.

And by the end of doing that research over two summers. I fully understood how the public health system works and where the gaps are and where I could contribute as a wildlife veterinarian. And so that was another really interesting time for me.

And we founded CTPH later. My husband was one of the first donors, him and I. We put $100 in a bank account in Wells Fargo, it used to be called Wacovia, then it became Wells Fargo in America. And then we convinced a third person, Steven Rubanga, who used to help me out when we were collecting samples in the TB research. He used to work at The Ministry of Agriculture as a vet technician. He was the third founding member. And I'd like to say my mom was a founding member because she worked with Stephen everywhere, getting all the permits for the NGO in Uganda and she also lent us her car and all of that.

Rebecca: And you talk about your mom in the book and just kind of how she was an inspiration to you as a woman in Ugandan politics. It seems like every step in your life someone has either challenged you to do something different or open your eyes to a new thing and you just jump straight in and say, yes, let me learn new things and kind of take on this challenge.

Can you tell us a little bit about Conservation Through Public Health and the goals of that organization and kind of your One Health approach to conservation?

Dr. Gladys: Yes. Conservation Through Public Health. I guess based on those experiences I had when people made gorillas sick. I found you cannot keep the gorillas healthy without improving the health of their human neighbors. So we kind of started CTPH to focus on preventing zoonotic disease between people and animals. Disease could go both directions. Also people can get sick from wildlife and people can also make wildlife sick. So we started off with wildlife conservation, wildlife health, community health. Those were the two main programs.

But later on we found out that many people are unhealthy because they're poor. And we started sustainable, alternative livelihoods. And also gorillas are not just a species, they live in a habitat. So we stretched the wildlife health, the wildlife conservation focus on One Health to look at habitat conservation as well.

So it's kind of evolved over time and we're always evolving, even during Covid we started food security, you know like getting people to have food crop gardens, we’re basically an organization with a One Health model that addresses the health of people, animals and the environment together, but it evolved, its evolving to meet the demands of the people.

So One Health model that's dynamic. And I would say that we are at the forefront of One Health approaches, not just in Uganda, but the whole world. Because when we started out, it was very difficult to fundraise. You go to human health donors, they're like, we don't fund animals. You go to animal health donors, I mean, animal conservation donors, they're like, we don't fund public health. And so now people are beginning to realize that you have to address both together.

So we set up one of the first food programs in the wild with a One Health approach that engages the local communities with the wildlife. Actually I became an Ashoka fellow for merging Uganda's wildlife management and rural public health programs to create common resources for people and animals. And so that new idea which is disruptive, made it so difficult to fundraise. Because you're trying to tell the donor like, to help the people you have to help the animals. And to help the animals you have to help the people.

Rebecca: It seems so simple. The donor world is very kind of cut and dry, and you were proposing a very simple solution, which just understands that we are all part of the ecosystem together, and we have to take care of everyone together.

So can you share a little bit about, obviously I think that One Health, that approach is maybe different in different communities, and that's what you're saying, that it's evolving, but you were sharing a bit before, just about the different programs that you have, and maybe like, what does a One Health model like, in Bwindi or another kind of area?

Dr. Gladys: Yes, a One Health model looks at the needs of the health needs of the animals, the people, and the environment together. So in Bwindi, one of the first things is we set up long-term systems for monitoring the health of the gorillas. And we didn't just stop on the gorillas. We set up a food laboratory. It used to be called a Gorilla Research Clinic, but now we call it a Gorilla Health and Community Conservation Center. And we collect fecal samples, non-invasive fecal samples from all the habituated groups every month and every five years during the gorilla census. Checking for parasites, bacteria, viruses, even things like SARS-Covid-2, which causes COVID, to see if they're picking them up from people, livestock, or amongst themselves.

And then we also look at it in people, you know, where people are mixing with gorillas and livestock. If we find human parasites in the gorillas, we deworm the people. We find livestock parasites in the gorillas, we deworm the livestock. If the parasites in the gorillas are causing clinical signs, we make sure that also the gorillas are dewormed. So all three. It's basically looking at preventing the disease transmission, but also treating where it's extreme to prevent further disease transmission. So those are the kind of things we do on that side.

And then the other side is, the longer term aspect and the more permanent one is, behavior change. We have to see people are changing their behavior. If they don't change their behavior, people will always make gorillas sick. People always pick up diseases from wildlife. So that's why behavior change is a very key component of what we do. And this I learned from the public health sector, because in the conservation community we do conservation education. And you know we started off with the theater groups where we'd meet the same kind of people we met when I was in my last year at the Wildlife Authority. We'd meet them and do skits, work with local drama groups to do skits, and you meet many people that all learn a lot. It's entertaining, but then you can't track them to see whether they're behavior is changing. And so then we found out that actually we could get people from each village, at least one person from each village, teach them to do health and conservation work together and get them to follow people to see how they're changing.

So when we started the CB DOTS, Community Based Direct Observation and Treatment Program, which is our very first program that we started, funded by the Irish government and later on by USAID, we were able to really see someone watch their next door neighbor taking medicine every day for eight months until they get better. So we could see how you could actually track people.

We also would talk about things like health and hygiene. Do you care about gorillas? Do you care about wildlife? And so then when we started the next program where we're now promoting family planning with support from USAID. We started a family planning program which is part of their Population, Health, Environment (PHE) programs at USAID and we're getting those same people, in fact we had wanted the same people who are watching people taking TB medicine, to be the ones who provide the family planning. But then when we met with the community they said no, it has to be one person per village so it's more equal. And we all agreed they have to be able to read and write because they're collecting data, and they have to be trusted so they're ethical, so people can trust them and want to follow them, rather than someone who people don't really trust. And surprisingly half the volunteers were women and half were men. We didn't, it was an unintended impact of our work, but it helped a lot. And so we taught them to do, to promote community-based family planning, all the methods.

And the family planning part came about because I didn't think it was very relevant to our work until I got to understand that actually people have so many kids. A woman, one woman can have ten children. And by the age of 25, she's had five. By the age of 36, she's had 10. And these are the live births. And someone who's 36 looks much older than they're supposed to be because they've had 10 children in a row. And because to feed these 10 children, they have to enter the forest to poach. Because they're feeding a large family, they have to cut a lot more firewood in the forest just to feed their family. And so it really was relevant to what we're doing.

And also, because we have many kids, you can’t give them good healthcare. And everybody's making each other sick. The people and the gorillas are making each other sick. So then I thought maybe we needed to, family planning suddenly complemented our One Health model, and it's been one of our most successful ones because women embraced it so quickly. They were tired of having a baby every year, wanting more control over their bodies. And the men, it was about balancing the family budget. So we did couple education. So both husband and wife are together in the home, you educate them together, you convince them together to change and they change. Cause if you only convince the women, the husbands would beat them and they would go back to not using contraceptives. So we found it was so important that both of them have to agree in order to plan their families together. So that was when we started our PHE, professional health environment program. And so then we called them Village Health, because in Uganda now the community health worker system had reached Bwindi by that time. And so the next set of people we worked with were already...We said let's go to VHTs, existing village health teams, and teach them to do conservation work.

And so that's how it's evolved and now we work with all the village health teams wherever we are and teach them all to do conservation work. So they talk about preventing zoonotic disease between people and animals, being hygienic, and the dangers of eating bush meat. They talk about the dangers of cutting firewood in the forest, the importance of planting trees and all those kinds of things. Good health-seeking behavior and good hygiene and looking out for people who are sick. And wherever gorillas come out they herd them back.

But we also taught them to look at nutrition and sustainable agriculture, because it's a very steep area and people have to farm sustainably because everything will get washed away. So we teach them about proper soil and water conservation. Also because it's the areas where there's tourism we also help them to, they get education the Wildlife Authority gives them information to take to the communities about how to access the revenue sharing money from tourism. So they're a vehicle that anyone can use.

So normally when we have meetings we always have the health people there, the wildlife people there, or anyone else who has a message to go to the households. And so they're able to reach, currently now we have over 10,000 volunteers, recently it increased from 7,000 to 10,000. And they're reaching over 50,000 people in homes with high human and greater conflict. So we're very excited. We started off with 26 and they were reaching 10,000 people, but now we have many, many more.

Rebecca: And it sounds like through each step, you've really listened to the community and the intelligence that they have about their area and just given them the expertise that they might need. And you write in the book about how people really think in wildlife conservation in Africa that it's mostly just been Muzungus or Westerners involved. And I’m wondering, having been involved yourself as a Ugandan woman, did that really change the dynamic with local communities? Do you think that's one of the reasons that you were able to see this wildlife human connection so clearly? Or what has it been like as a Ugandan woman in this position?

Dr. Gladys: I'll say as a Ugandan woman in this position, it's been quite a unique journey, which I write about actually in my book, Walking with Gorillas. First of all, when I was first taken to Bwindi National Park, Dr. Liz McPhee introduced me and said she's a vet student, she's gonna be collecting, doing a study on gorillas. The warden was very excited to see a Ugandan doing a study on gorillas, because they hadn't seen that. You know, a Ugandan vet student doing study on gorillas. So people are happy to see people who look like them from the same country, leading research efforts or leading conservation efforts. So that's made people feel that they can also lead research and conservation efforts. They can be champions for conservation. So I think that really helped change the perception that it's only people from other countries who can lead these efforts. You can also have people from within yourself who can do it. So that was really important.

And I think the women, when they saw me speaking or the very first health education workshops in the community, I was a skinny vet, like a 30 year old vet, I think at the time. And when they looked at me, I got up to talk and they saw that I was a woman leading a team of men, because I was leading the effort. They noticed that I was the team leader. And then the rangers told me the women didn't speak much, they were a bit shy, only one woman was a bit not shy, but most of them are just a bit shy. But the rangers told me the women are whispering to each other, they're saying we have to educate our daughters. They said look at you, you're leading a team of men. It's great if I made them feel like it's important to educate their daughters. So I inspired the women in the local community.

So I think it's important to have people from that area. When I started out there were no female rangers going out, following the animals, treating animals or doing patrols.

Rebecca: And it's a good job to work in the community, to be a ranger and work for the UWA, right?

Dr. Gladys: They earn more than others now. It hasn't always been the case. But they earn more than others now and they're proud of themselves. But now 20% of the rangers are female and they're holding a gun and they're really doing a good job and I'm very proud of them.

Yeah, but at the time they weren't…The reason they accepted me is because I was doing something unique. I was coming to treat the animals, which none of them could do, but they supported me a lot. Yeah, the rangers supported me, the wardens, everybody. It was great.

Rebecca: You even write in the book that conservation, I think the quote is, you say, “My 30 year journey in conservation has shown me that when you don't engage and empower women, conservation is unlikely to work in the long term.” There's something crucial about women's empowerment to the long-term sustainability of these projects.

Dr. Gladys: Yes, it really is, it's very important to empower women. Lille with our One Health model. You know, women normally do healthcare, men normally do conservation, natural resource management. But because we're now getting men to do healthcare and family planning and women to do conservation and natural resource management, it's very important because all of them have, women and men affect the environment differently and affect public health differently.

I mean, for example, when one gorilla was killed during COVID because people are hungry, we decided to, we had thought that meeting with the reform poachers is not an essential activity in the pandemic. What was essential was meeting with the rangers, getting them to wear masks, training them to look out for gorillas which are sick, training the gorilla guardians who heard them back and the village health and conservation teams, that everybody has to have hand washing stations, and put on masks and prevent COVID amongst themselves or between themselves and gorillas. But when Rafiki was killed, the friendly silverback, lead silverback in the Kuringo Gorilla Group, the chief warden said to me, actually, I think you should engage the reformed poachers, since you had it in your program, it's urgent. We don't want any more deaths. So when we met with them, I remember the first meeting I happened to be the only woman on our team but, I don't know why that happened but anyway, on the other side some of the poachers came with their wives and the wives actually said they encouraged their husbands to poach to put food on the table. And so as much as you may talk to the men and say, “don't go back to the forest”, they go home and their wives are like, “we have no food, go back to the forest.” So all of those, it's so important to have the women in the meetings as well.

And also there was this belief, which we found out when we started the theater groups, that whenever a child gets sick, the man goes into the forest to hunt an animal because they think bush meat is medicinal. But again, it's the woman, the mother, who will say, tell her husband, go and we need food, we need medicine for the child, we need food for the table. So by meeting with them, they were able to, they're very influential in the family. They were able to say, “okay, this is something we shouldn't be doing. We should find other ways so that we can coexist with the wildlife.” But it's just an example of why it's important to equally engage men and women at the same time.

Rebecca: Yea and that it's so linked between the health of the environment, the health of the people, the role of men and women are all like very aligned. I also found it interesting to learn about livelihoods and the role that livelihoods play in wildlife conservation, especially with tourism now increasing in these areas. Yeah I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that and maybe also Gorilla Conservation Coffee, your other venture?

Dr. Gladys: Yeah, livelihoods is something that we decided to get into. Because I remember one time I gave a presentation, we did a survey, a household survey of the first two parishes we went to. We reached 2000, I think we went to about 2500 households. And so in that survey, we basically did a lot, collected a lot of data, not just hygiene but also someone living in a temporary home or semi permanent or permanent home? Do they have livestock? We did a whole thing. And when I presented it at a research meeting, one of the wardens said… I thought they would say “oh people really are unhygienic.” Because we found the homes that are closer to the park, closer to the forest, had worse indicators than the homes farther away. Like they had less handwashing stations. There was more open defecation and things like that. Fewer of them had hand washing stations. So when I presented, I was expecting that kind of reaction and instead I got the reaction as, these people are really poor. These people are really poor.

And then we started realising that there's coffee farmers around the park, so my husband was like why don't we engage these coffee farmers and create a global coffee brand that can save the gorillas. And so you know that can get people to give money and help the farmers.

And we found out that these same farmers are still entering the forest to poach because not everybody is part of the tourism industry. As much as tourism has helped a lot and lifted a lot of people out of poverty because it created jobs, 90% of the rangers are from the local community. They used to poach, now they're protecting the wildlife. We used to call them born-again poachers at that time. And then some of them are selling crafts, accommodation, forest walks.

But not everyone can be part of that. Or carry your luggage to the gorillas as a porter. So we realised that by helping the coffee farmers, we're also reducing poaching, habitat destruction. We're helping to keep the whole ecosystem going, improving community livelihoods in other ways, the tourists are not able to reach them. And so we started Gorilla Conservation Coffee in 2015 with support from World Wildlife Fund Switzerland. We set up a social enterprise of Conservation Through Public Health. And the whole idea is we give the farmers a good price for good coffee. It has to be either premium or specialty, because we have to sell it at premium or specialty prices, and no one's gonna buy, they may buy the coffee first time around but if it doesn't taste good they won't buy it again. Actually that area has very good coffee, it's at a very high altitude and it has very good coffee, just like Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda or the Rwenzoris a bit farther north, also in Western Uganda. So we're like, “Uganda is famous for coffee and gorillas.” Let's also join hands with the coffee industry in Uganda, Uganda Coffee Development Authority, and help to produce a very good coffee, because that's all part of what we do in Uganda. And if it's done right, agriculture and conservation can reinforce each other.

So we started that journey of Gorilla Conservation Coffee, which is very exciting. We started off with 75 farmers, of which only five were women farmers. They kept telling us women don't own land and most of them were widows. But later on we thought, you know, we kept saying we need to engage more women. So then we're using a model farmer system, 25 farmers meant another 19. So I engaged 500 farmers and of them 120 were women, which is great. And now more recently we've increased from 120 to 230 women. So that's very exciting.

Rebecca: Yeah, that's very exciting. And so they're all part of a cooperative together?

Dr. Gladys: Yes, the Bwindi Coffee Growers Cooperative, which we help to facilitate and create. So we engage the farmers, the local communities, and give them a better price than they would normally get. It's almost like a conservation premium. And they produce, currently we're only buying Arabica coffee, but we also want to buy Robusta because most people in Uganda grow Robusta coffee. So maybe we want to create a second brand, which is a brand of Robusta and Arabica together, and continue to support these farmers. And a donation from every bag sold goes to support the work of Conservation Through Public Health to create sustainable financing for conservation. So it supports the community health, gorilla health, and conservation education, supporting the village health and conservation teams in that same area.

Rebecca: So it's a model that's interlinked. Everything is kind of supporting to create more sustainable livelihoods and conservation. I think that's the One Health Model, right? To really look at the whole ecosystem.

Dr. Gladys: It is. And even with the coffee farming, we found that coffee that you plant with shade trees is actually better quality and gives you a better yield. And that fits in with all of what we do in conservation. We have a commitment to zero deforestation. So we are part of the Conservation International Sustainable Coffee Challenge that aims to make coffee the first fully sustainable crop in the whole world. And so what we do is we, as a commitment to zero deforestation, we want to help with climate action. So we're trying to encourage them to plant shade trees that absorb carbon as well and it also means that they can have firewood but also they can plant shade trees and they get a better coffee yield.

So it's all part of that whole thing - getting more and more people to get engaged in conservation. In fact we tell them this is not just about coffee it's actually about conservation but coffee is a vehicle. Because those people have seen how conservation has impacted them, their area has developed because of tourists coming who are protecting the gorillas and their habitat. They really buy into this conservation coffee story.

Rebecca: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a really beautiful model. I'm curious, because obviously you have this organisation, and mainly in Uganda, what does the future look like, or what are your goals or hopes for Conservation Through Public Health or the One Health model in Uganda and also outside?

Dr. Gladys: Yes, I'd say that my goal for Conservation Through Public Health is to be able to scale up to many other places. Either through us setting up programs in these places or training other people to do this work. It could be government workers, it could be non-profit workers, it could be community health workers. We always have to have the communities there because they're very much a part of our village of conservation team model. But they need to be supported by the governments wherever they are. Some areas also need to be supported by local nonprofits in that area. So we want to work closely with them. And we'd like to scale up CTPH, we've kind of set up a model in a savanna ecosystem at Queen Elizabeth National Park, like a testing site so other people can adopt the model who mainly focus on savanna species.

We've done some work in Budongo Forest as well with the chimpanzees working with the Jane Goodall Institute and Budongo Conservation Field Station. There the very same issues with chimps and gorillas, they're quite the same. And also we've done it in Mount Elgon to look at, because we found out that when we improve community health, we improve community access to conservation because you're showing them that you also care about them and not just the animals, the plants and the wildlife. So they have, they started planting trees and encroaching on the habitat less at Mount Elgon because we show them that we care about their health and it was one way to promote human animal coexistence by setting up the model at Mount Elgon. We're working with the government purely. In Budongo, we work at the Jane Goodall Institute. In Queen Elizabeth, we kind of did some work there but working with the government.

So we're looking at how it can scale up in different ways, but ultimately we want to focus on the gorilla protected areas because we want to feel that we're making a difference with gorillas not only in Uganda, but around the world. So we want to, among the ten countries in Africa that have gorillas, we would like to scale up to those countries. Because we did start in DRC. And as much as there was a conflict we've seen a lot of progress there because it's exactly the same model that we have at Bwindi, the issues are almost exactly the same. So yes, we do want to scale up the One Health model to many other places. The main area where we have a big field station at Bwindi and that's where we can always test the different approaches that we are then able to take to other places working with local partners in all these various countries. With partners in Uganda to scale the model to other places. So that's my dream for Conservation Through Public Health.

And the coffee, the Gorilla Conservation Coffee, the reason why we call it Gorilla Conservation Coffee and not Bwindi Conservation Coffee is because we want to be able to, we know that it can work in any area where you have coffee and gorillas, where there are coffee farmers and they're living right next to gorillas. And we know that other countries in Africa can have that opportunity and it can help to protect the wildlife. So we would also like Gorilla Conservation Coffee to scale up to other places. Also the big part of it is the market. You know some of our biggest market is in the UK and the US where we have distributors who buy coffee from us.

Rebecca: Yeah Ugandans don't drink coffee.

Dr. Gladys: Yes, I know, I know. But, we’re changing that. We have a cafe where many Ugandans are now coming and they're learning how to drink a latte, a cappuccino, which is more similar to African tea, you know with milk.

Rebecca: Yeah, not just black coffee.

Dr. Gladys: Exactly. And actually the Uganda Coffee Development Authority really wants Ugandans to start drinking coffee. So we’ve teamed up, they like us. We're helping to train baristas. But then what we want to do with coffee is let it be available everywhere. It's also available in New Zealand and we just want it to be available in so many different countries. Australia a little bit. But we're looking for distributors all over the world because the more distributors we can have, the more coffee that can be bought abroad, the more farmers we can engage.

And actually, right now we don't have enough money to engage the farmers. We can't even buy coffee from all the 500 farmers. Only from 20% of them at best. So we are looking for more external markets to be able to realise its full potential as Gorilla Conservation Coffee. We also have a camp where we host tourists and volunteers and researchers and students and interns to kind of learn about our work and get really immersed in gorilla conservation.

Rebecca: Yeah and it sounds like this model is intended to work in other communities as well even like you were saying in DRC there's a lot of conflict particularly on mining, but making sustainable livelihoods, around conservation, around tourism, around coffee, can even help to balance maybe some of those other dynamics that maybe Uganda doesn't have, but other places around, and specifically wildlife areas in Uganda's neighbours, do have. So I'm excited to see where Conservation Through Public Health goes in the future.

Dr. Gladys: And also because tourism is not always available everywhere. It can’t happen where there's conflict. But people can have sustainable livelihoods that are not dependent on tourism. Gorilla Conservation Coffee is one way that they can do that. As long as you can have the external markets. I mean, many of our customers are tourists visiting the gorillas, but even if, actually COVID was a wake-up call because tourism disappeared overnight, and we suddenly had no money to buy more coffee from farmers, and we really started focusing on building up those external markets. So in the UK it's Manny Robbins, in the US it used to be Pango's, and now it's Crado, and in New Zealand there's New Zealand G.C. Coffee, New Zealand.org. So we're trying to make sure that we focus our marketing efforts on external markets because the internal tourism market is a bit up and down.

Rebecca: Yeah, and you write about that in the book as well, being able to balance the benefits of tourism without becoming reliant on it or falling into some of the ills or harms of tourism.

Dr. Gladys: Yeah, definitely. It's a delicate balance.

Rebecca: Yeah, I feel that way even as a tourist here sometimes, trying to make sure I'm supporting the local community and not just being shipped from one area to another is really important.

Dr. Gladys: It's so important to support the local communities.

Rebecca: Yeah, and I think you wrote in the book that the local communities now get 20% of the tourist entry permit.

Dr. Gladys: They do. It's actually an act of parliament that 20% of the park entry fee from all the national parks in Uganda have to go to the local communities. And in Bwindi because you can only have eight tourists visiting each gorilla group per day. We now have about 25 habituated groups, you can do the mathematics how much in a day. But the 20% entry fee is not enough. So ten dollars from every permit also goes to the local community for the chimp permit and the gorillas.

So that really makes a difference. So with the chimps I’m not sure actually anything comes from the permit. But with the gorillas I’m sure, 10 dollars from every permit goes to the local community. So it ends up being a quite sizable amount of money. And that money goes to build schools, clinics, roads, but also goes to help in community projects. They can apply for funding and set up businesses. As much as possible, the government is working with NGOs like ours to make sure that it's equitably shared. So that we can enable people to coexist with the wildlife. That's the whole intention.

[...]

Rebecca: Well thank you. Just shifting gears a little bit because I know we want to wrap up. I'm wondering if you could just describe to our listeners who maybe haven't been to Uganda or are curious, what is it like to walk around in Bwindi? Or what is kind of the natural experience of being with the gorillas?

Dr. Gladys: I'd say that Bwindi is such a beautiful forest. It's an Afro-Montane tropical rainforest. In the early morning, you can see the mist rising. And whenever it rains, the mist rises. Sometimes you can't see anything because it's really misty. And then it moves away and it's really clear. And as you walk in the forest, it's quite dense. That's why it's called the impenetrable forest. And the word Bwindi means place of darkness, because when people, the local community used to go through, it was dark. And it can be dark inside the forest. And you do see a lot of interesting…there's still very many hardwoods, very old trees, over a hundred years old. But inside Bwindi, you don't only see very interesting vegetation, secondary growth. The gorillas really like the secondary growth. Anything, even if they eat the vegetation, and then as they move along, they drop the seeds passed through their body, and it keeps regenerating wherever they go.

Rebecca: They're part of the reproductive cycle of the forest.

Dr. Gladys: Yes, they're very much a part of the ecological garden, as you'd say. They're part of the ecological garden, along with the elephants, the forest elephants, and even the chimpanzees as well in Bwindi forests. But also on top of being able to see gorillas, you occasionally come across elephant dung because there's forest elephants. Sometimes you see chimpanzees in the trees, and you definitely hear them often because they're much louder than gorillas. Gorillas are silent. You may hear them making noises, but they're silent. You have to see it, but they do live a very big trail. So different from chimps, which don't leave a trail, but you can hear them. And then you also have four species of monkeys in the forest. There is the blue monkey, the red tail monkey, there's a black and white colobus, and then there's a loess monkey, which is only found in Bwindi forest and Kibale National Park.

And then you also have the baboons on the outskirts, the naughty baboons, which are kind of a menace. But then you also have over 300 species of birds, of which 23 are endemic to the Bwindi area. And you have over 200 species of butterflies. You also have pangolins in there. We released pangolins back, really exciting. We also have a diker and bush pig which people like to poach and then gorillas get caught in the snares. There's a lot in that forest and by protecting the gorillas we're able to protect all the other animals. It's also a very important water catchment area and kind of modulator because of the forest is more rain and the moment you start cutting down trees, you know you start to have this climate change which is detrimental to the wildlife and the people.

Rebecca: Awesome. Yeah, I haven't been, I've been mostly in the Rwenzoris but I would love to visit Bwindi before I go.

Dr. Gladys: And it's good you visited the chimpanzees in Kibale.

Rebecca: Yeah, I got to spend some time with the chimps. They are loud. They like to chat.

Is there anything you wanted to share just before I ask our final kind of closing question? Anything you want to share with listeners or you think that people outside of Uganda or climate curious people would want to know?

Dr. Gladys: I would maybe just say that climate change is very connected to biodiversity. We have to have a stable climate in order to have stable biodiversity, the two go together. And you also need a stable climate in order to have stable livelihoods and health care. Basically to have a healthy planet and healthy people and a planet in balance, we need to try and reduce the level of climate change we are having. It's raining when you shouldn't be raining. It's shining when it shouldn't be shining. There's droughts. There's extreme floods, people's crops get washed away. Infectious diseases are going up. So we have to be very careful. All of us can do something about the climate crisis, in our own individual way.

Rebecca: And I've learned from you a lot about looking at it through that One Health perspective, that all of that is really intertwined, that you can't necessarily target one without really looking at the others. Or you might miss something or be unsuccessful if you're only focused on one.

Dr. Gladys: Yes.

Rebecca: Our kind of closing question that we like to ask everyone. because obviously our organisation is called Climate Words. so we're focused on words. But is there a word or a phrase, it doesn't necessarily have to be climate related, that is like coming to you right now or has been interesting in your work? Either English or Buganda that you're kind of just drawn to right now? I know I've put you on the spot. I do this to everyone.

Dr. Gladys: Any word that I'm drawn to? Hmm. Regarding, and it's connected to climate?

Rebecca: Yeah, or not, but yeah. Even I mean some people have told me even just like peace or you know just because right now there's a lot of conflict going on. Or something you've been focused on?

Dr. Gladys: I'll say harmony.

Rebecca: And harmony because?

Dr. Gladys: because we have to coexist with our

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great ape cousins and we have to coexist with the environment. We can't be separate from the wildlife. It's part of us. And we need to live in harmony with each other.

Rebecca: That's a wonderful way to end. Thank you so much.