Champion of the Earth Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka: Saving Our Precious Gorilla-people, Part 1 of 2

Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka is the first-ever full-time wildlife vet for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She started working for the government agency in 1996. The caring lady is also the founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH). CTPH seeks to better the relationship between humans and the wildlife-people in the biodiverse habitats surrounding them by improving community health and livelihoods. In turn, the local residents in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who are aided by CTPH, become steadfast partners in wildlife conservation.

In 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme named Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka a “Champion of the Earth” for her 30 years of helping safeguard primates, particularly the highly endangered mountain gorilla-individuals.

As a child, Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka insisted on accompanying the animal family members to the vet whenever they were unwell. She would stay home from school to visit the vet with her mother and knew that she wanted to become a veterinarian. During her post-secondary education, Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka attended the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, UK. To her delight, the school allowed students to choose the animal-people species to work with for training.

During the early part of her career, she found herself explaining the role of a wildlife vet to people who felt animal-persons ought to take care of themselves. “What was most interesting about it is people didn't understand what a vet does in wildlife. I would say people were cynical about what I was doing. But then, when they saw the benefits, when they saw a whole gorilla group being saved, when they got scabies from the local community, they were like, ‘Yeah, we would have lost over a million dollars a year if this gorilla group had died.’ So, then people started to see the value of having a vet in wildlife conservation.”

“It’s very therapeutic actually, when you're with gorillas. You feel really relaxed when you're with them. They really are gentle giants. They're very accommodating once they get used to people. So, it's really amazing. Every single time I visit them, I learn something new.”