Mgahinga Gorilla National Park is home to only one habituated gorilla family available for tourism known as the Nyakagezi Gorilla Family. A small but very special population of mountain gorillas. Unlike other parks like Bwindi and Volcanoes National Park that host several groups, Mgahinga offers a more intimate and less crowded experience, centered around the famous Nyakagezi Gorilla Family. This group is well known for its stability, unique social structure, and high chances of being tracked successfully, making it the highlight of gorilla trekking in the park.
The Nyakagezi gorilla family is the sole fully habituated mountain gorilla group in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, making it the focus of gorilla trekking in this part of Uganda. The group’s history begins soon after Mgahinga was formally gazetted as a national park in 1991, when conservationists began the intentional process of habituating a wild gorilla group so that humans could observe them safely without causing stress or disruption.
Before habituation, these gorillas were part of the broader mountain gorilla population that ranged across the Virunga Massif, moving freely between what are now Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Research and tracking teams gradually grew accustomed to the group’s daily patterns, allowing the gorillas to become familiar with rangers and trackers over time.
By 1994, the group had become sufficiently tolerant of human presence that it could be opened to ecotourism, giving Mgahinga its first official gorilla trekking opportunity
Leadership within the Nyakagezi family has its own interesting story. For many years, the dominant silverback of the group was Bugingo, an exceptionally old and experienced leader who has lived well beyond the age most silverbacks survive in the wild. What makes Bugingo especially remarkable is that he continues to remain part of the group even after another male took over as the primary leader—a rare occurrence in mountain gorilla social dynamics, where defeated silverbacks often leave or are forced out. Bugingo’s son, Mark, eventually became the group’s dominant silverback but Bugingo remains with the family, serving as an elder and a living link to the group’s past. This unusual arrangement is one of the reasons Nyakagezi is fascinating to both researchers and visitors.
Although the Nyakagezi gorillas were once itinerant, in about 2012 the group began to settle permanently within Mgahinga National Park. Before then, their movement between three countries made booking and seeing them somewhat unpredictable. Since settling in Uganda, conservation teams have been able to monitor them more closely, maintain higher tracking success rates—often over 95%—and offer reliable gorilla trekking experiences to tourists. Because they occupy a relatively narrow home range with abundant food and flatter terrain compared with some other gorilla groups, Nyakagezi has become known as one of the easier groups to track in the region.