Uganda

WCS began conservation work in Uganda through conducting biological surveys of savanna parks in 1957. Since that time WCS has continued to provide funds for conservation almost every year up to the present despite the era of Idi Amin and the civil wars that followed. During the 1970s and 80s, we supported conservation of Kibale Forest, which became a national park in 1993. Since then, WCS has supported the building of research and management capacities of Ugandans through aiding student research projects, helping to develop the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC), and more recently providing training to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and National Forest Authority (NWA) staff.

The Human Aspect
Uganda has a population of 24 million people and as a result many protected areas have hard edges between the park/reserve and the local people’s farms. Crop raiding by animals from the protected areas is a major concern and WCS is working with CARE to develop methods to address this issue at present.

Threats
The major threats to protected areas include poaching for bushmeat, illegal timber harvesting, charcoal burning and encroachment for farmland. Each of these has degraded protected areas over the past 40 years and led to reduced numbers of wildlife. Better protection in the 1990s has led to a slow but steady increase in many large mammal numbers, but some continue to decline.

WCS Activities
WCS is currently supporting projects that build the capacity of Ugandan protected area managers.  WCS believes in supporting the national institutions rather than creating parallel ones. Working with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) over the last two years, we have developed a monitoring and research plan for every national park and wildlife reserve in Uganda. This project links the monitoring of protected areas to strategies being used to address the threats to them. Wardens assess the effectiveness of their actions and how they can adapt to changes as they appear.  We have also been undertaking surveys of all the forested protected areas in western Uganda to determine baseline numbers of species for future monitoring. Such a survey led to a complete census of chimpanzees in Uganda and the development of an action plan for their conservation with UWA.  A census  of the mountain gorilla populations over the last two years have shown increases in the numbers both in Bwindi (320) and the Virungas (380), bringing the total world population to 700. We also conduct surveys in order  to develop zoning plans for the forests based on biological criteria. Zoning of the forests is necessary so that fewer valuable areas can be accessed by local people for firewood, medicinal plants and other non-timber forest products.
WCS also supports the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) to undertake applied research on mountain gorilla conservation challenges, the effects of hard edges on long-term viability of forest islands, and the effectiveness of conservation strategies involving local people. We are developing a project with NatureUganda, a local NGO, to publicize the plight of large mammals in Uganda and to build the capacity of the NGO.

We are also supporting cross border collaboration between Uganda (UWA) and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Greater Virunga Landscape.

Important Next Steps

• Undertake an economic valuation of forests to show their importance in poverty alleviation.
• Support the National Forest Authority (NFA) to develop a similar monitoring program to UWA.
• Undertake landscape species research in the Greater Virunga Landscape to ensure their long-term survival.