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Forest landscape and walking through the jungle

Cronin: The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southern Uganda - a remote and remarkable place - home to one of the rarest creatures on earth, the mountain gorilla

For those prepared to make the long steep trek, the reward is to see the giant primates in their natural state - no bars or windows separating us from them.

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Gorillas playing in the forest.

Cronin: But life in the forest is no longer as it was.

Now the Ugandan People's Defence Force patrols the Impenetrable Forest every day.

There’s even an old Russian T55 tank rumbling through the jungle. The soldiers were sent in following the murder of eight foreign tourists by Hutu rebels last year.

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Soldiers singing

Cronin: Before the attack - there was no army presence here. After decades of terror under Idi Amin, Uganda had actually enjoyed more than ten years of relative stability. But the Bwindi killings once again wrote Uganda’s headlines in blood.

Mark: The place has set you up because, they’re not having threats around since we came.

Landscape of Uganda

Uganda is now desperate to convince the world that Bwindi is safe. But it's not easy. The Impenetrable Forest sits in one of the most unstable corners of Africa, bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

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Cronin: Our 500 kilometre journey to Bwindi starts on the equator. The road curls around Lake Victoria, source of the Nile and the second largest lake in the world.

From a moving car, coffee plantations and roadside.

Ten jarring hours on, through plantations of coffee and bananas, the mountains finally loom, dark and green. A reminder of just how close the rebel strongholds are -- these volcanic hills lie inside the Congo -- home to the Rwandan Hutus who launched the Bwindi raid.

Newsreader: The savagery of the brutal murder of the 8 tourists in Uganda has shocked the world. Their bodies have now been brought to a morgue in Kampala to be examined and identified by Ugandan and international authorities including the FBI.

Deserted safari camp

Cronin: These are the rather eerie remains of what was Bwindi's most luxurious safari camp. The operators still haven't returned.

03:26

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Katy Cronin

There were about 30 tourists staying in the area the day the attack happened. Most were still asleep when 150 armed rebels swept down the ridge and into the village. They looted and burned and killed as they went. And they ended up here where they rounded up the tourists they could find - robbed them - and then marched 14 of them off through the jungle towards the Congo border. Only 6 came back alive.

Mark interview

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Mark Ross

Safari Guide

Mark: You cannot believe the depth of the fear and the terror - the sounds, the smells, the smoke, the bodies - that encompassed us all and affected us all forever.

04:01

Cronin: Mark Ross, a professional guide, is the only survivor prepared to talk about his ordeal. But he ran into trouble with the Ugandan authorities from the beginning by rejecting claims the tourists died in crossfire during a rescue attempt.

News footage of Mark’s interview

Mark: They were executed - there wasn’t any rescue attempt.

04:34

Cronin: His doubts about the safety of the forest mean he's not welcome, but he won't be silenced.

Mark: I think there's a common thread through a lot of this part of the world. Gee, we don’t want to hear bad news. So let's just not talk about bad news and therefore there is nothing bad. And that naivety does not wash with the western world.

Meeting with Caleb and others in the field

Caleb: If we don’t have the gorillas I don’t think you’d be coming here to get to see us. So we are happy because you are coming to see us.

04:59

Cronin: Despite the risks a handful of tourists and their dollars are very slowly trickling back. German, Walter and Elizabeth, like us, had paid USD250 per ticket and had to agree to strict guidelines. Any chance of passing on disease, even a sniffle, means forfeiting the trek.

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Caleb Tusiime

Head of Gorilla Habituation

Caleb: Maybe some person's coughing, then the virus is going directly to the gorillas.

05:30

Cronin: We're to make no loud noises which might upset the animals. No flash or camera lights – And we will be accompanied by two soldiers and an armed park warden. Even then there's no guarantee that we'll reach our goal, to spend just one hour with a gorilla family.

Walking through thick jungle

Then the trackers will follow their trail, but with a feeding radius of up to 20 kilometres, we could be walking for five hours.

06:00

But today we’re lucky.

In under an hour the trackers have found the group and we get our first glimpse – a black bundle up in the trees.

Gorillas in the jungle

A female appears pulling her baby into her arms – a familiar gesture from any protective mother.

06:34

It will be he who determines how long we can stay. And he does soon move off – youngsters scrambling through the branches following the leader.

Fearing our promised one hour visit might be short lived, we follow them.

But the silverback has taken the gorillas to a creek, and when we get there we’re permitted an extraordinary viewing.

Silverback sitting by creek.

Cronin: We can see the silverback over there. Is he happy for us to be here really?

07:40

Caleb: This gentleman, Luhondeza is very happy, because he has seen us several times, and because his name is called Luhondeza -- carefree guy who's always sleeping, so he doesn't mind. What he does is always sleep after his eating. So no problem. If there was to be some problem, we have been here for like 35 minutes, or maybe half an hour, he would have charged us, he would have sent us away from – so closer we have got – so there's no problem. That's why you don't him shout and make noise, that kind of thing. So what he does in order to protect his family. That's why you see him always behind.

Distant views of rainy jungle

Cronin to camera with others sheltering from rain.

Cronin: Well it’s the rainy season in Uganda - we’ve all stopped to take a bit of shelter - including the gorillas. The silverback is just here behind me. He’s 39 years old and obviously the king pin in this group of 18 animals. There are six females with him and 11 of their offspring and they’ve been visited every day by tourists or park wardens since 1993.

08:28

Cronin: Keeping up the contact through the years of war in neighbouring Congo and Rwanda has not been easy. It takes years to habituate a group of gorillas to tolerate human observers. And only a fraction of Bwindi’s gorillas are used to seeing people up close.

Of the 28 family groups in the park, only four are being visited.

Humans share 98 per cent of the same genes as gorillas - and few visitors don’t respond to expressions and behaviour that’s so easy for us to understand.

Gorillas beside the creek

Only 300 gorillas are now left in this forest, making them one of the world's most endangered species. But their protection has not come without cost.

09:35

The Batwa – one of Uganda's pygmy tribes – was forced to leave the forest when the gorilla park was created.

Cedraka: People want to make the forest into a park – that’s why we were moved out. We were afraid – chased out by forest protectors.

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Men dancing in campsite.

Cronin: They to used to dance for tourists - the few extra shillings often made the difference between eating and going hungry.

But these days there’s not much demand for their unique brand of entertainment.

And in the villages they're treated like freaks.

10:17

Cedraka: They say don’t drink from my cup, don’t eat from my plate you are Batwa. It makes me sad. I’m a human being. I don’t know why they say that.

Cronin: He often feels that the gorillas get a better deal than he does.

Scenes of the tribe, and Cedraka interview

Cedraka: They say the forest is for gorillas, not for people. I feel nothing for the gorillas.

10:59

Cronin: The damage to Uganda's reputation and economy is now so grave that the president has made it his personal mission to revive gorilla tourism;

President: They should come. I've been there, they should come.

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Yoweri Museveni

President of Uganda

I was there to check the situation for myself, but also to give confidence to people who have developed fear for that very nice spot.

Mark interview

Mark: I think until you've got a very solid political solution, you will not have a physical solution, regarding that part of the world.

11:36

Cronin: While President Museveni implores tourists to return, Mark Ross is not among them. He still doesn't share the President's certainty about Bwindi.

Mark: I would think their best gamut is to get it all out in the open, show that it's now – or they're working towards making it safe.

Driving in open top 4 wheel drive with Mark

Cronin: Effectively barred from Uganda, we had to meet him in Kenya, where he bases his professional guiding business and other interests.

Along for this trip to a private game park was a New York book editor. The Bwindi incident is part of a memoir Ross is writing about his adventures in Africa. He's also sold film rights to Hollywood, but the Ugandan government is fearful that a movie would be no Gorillas in the Mist. The President has threatened legal action.

12:07

Museveni interview

Museveni: Yeah, I think we could legally challenge him, because he has no right to unduly damage our image. We may have to think of putting an injunction on this fellow, a legal injunction, because he has no right to misrepresent the situation.

12:44

Cronin: Mark Ross resents his public enemy status in Uganda - more so because he and some of the other survivors want to return to Bwindi - if he could only get the go head from Kampala.

Cronin: If they asked you to come back and make your own assessment about whether or not it was secure, would you do that?

Mark: I would yeah I’d pay my own way and fly over there right away – absolutely. I mean it’s a stunning forest I have had nothing but great times there - with great people there - so I’d go back in a heartbeat.

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Gorillas in the forest

Cronin: What everyone - including President Museveni and Mark Ross agree on - is that an audience with the gorillas is a rare privilege.

It’s worth remembering that while there are six billion people on the planet - there are only 600 gorillas living in the wild - half of them here - in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

13:44

Credits:

Uganda Gorillas

Reporter: Katy Cronin

Camera: Geoff Lye

Editors: Stuart Miller

Wendy Twibill

Research: Adrian Bradley

Producer Ian Altschwager