Forest For Who? A Minor Field Study Exploring Local Narratives About Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, South-Western Uganda

Integrated Conservation and Development (ICD) strategies in nature conservation are increasingly recognised as a way to protect the world’s remaining rainforest without neglecting the needs of the local people who are dependent on the forest resources for their livelihoods. With that said, there is still much to be learned about how to best design and implement ICD in the management of national parks. Many forest dependent communities living adjacent to national parks remain excluded from decision making, and their experiences, views and knowledge remain unheard. This case study addresses that issue in an exploration of local narratives about Mgahinga Gorilla national Park (MGNP) in South-western Uganda, where ICD strategies are used in the management, in response to local antagonism towards the park after its establishment in 1991. I employ a social-ecological perspective in the investigation of how the communities neighbouring Mgahinga Gorilla National Park make sense of the national park, its history and its management, and what implications it has for local environment stewardship and sustainability. I identify and analyse four dominant local narratives about MGNP drawing on the stories told by residents from five villages neighbouring MGNP. The study shows that the local communities do not associate MGNP with the same balance of opportunities and challenges, and that they have various and heterogeneous interests in relation to the national park based on their individual and collective experiences and interactions in the social ecological systems around MGNP through time