Mburo People Benefit From Hunting Project

New Vision (Kampala)

June 8, 2004
Kampala

THREE years after a pilot sport-hunting project began on the ranches outside Lake Mburo National Park in Mbarara district, local communities have started reaping the benefits. In return for managing wild animals. Gerald Tenywa recently attended the launch of the expansion of the project to two other parishes and reports

THOUGH money never grows on trees, pastoralists around Lake Mburo National Park have discovered that it can be hidden under the thickets.

The wild animals roaming the semi-arid landscape covered by acacia trees on the ranches outside the park have become money-spinners.

The project allows the communities to manage the wild animals and in return do sport-hunting in the park.

Because of this, the prospects of communities co-existing with wild animals look brighter.

The ranch owners where the wild animals graze outside the park benefit from the incentives created through the pilot-hunting project.

They have built two schools, six teachers' houses, a health centre and a dam for providing water for livestock, thanks to the project.

"We treasure the wild animals because hunting has improved our welfare," says Andrew Kanganire, the chairman of Rurambira Wildlife Association, a community-based organisation comprising of land owners and settlers on the ranches.

Game Trails Ltd, a company belonging to a local investor Kaka Matama, and the communities are working together under this lucrative hunting deal.

Under the scheme, a buffalo goes for $600 (sh1,000,000) compared to less than sh50,000, which poachers earn out of the sale of meat from a carcass.

The communities get 65% of the proceeds, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) 15%, landowners 10%, sub-county local government 5% and the Community Protected Areas Institutions 5%.

UWA gives the communities annual quotas to hunt animals such as impalas, zebras, topis, hippos, baboons, duikers and buffaloes on the ranches.

Speaking recently at a ceremony to launch the expansion of the project to two more parishes, Dr. Arthur Mugisha of UWA blamed the destruction of habitats on the exclusion of communities in managing wildlife.

The local communities, under the three-year sport-hunting project, have now become empowered and this has helped reduce poaching and charcoal burning.

However, some wildlife activists are opposed to the project. They argue that the animals should instead be protected as a tourist attraction.

"Those responsible for such schemes.and the introduction of backdoor hunting under the guise of pilot projects have ill-motives," says Dr Wolfgang Thome, the Uganda Tourism Association president.

In a report entitled "Protected Areas in Uganda", released last year at the World Park Congress in South Africa, sport-hunting was displayed as an example of sustainable use of nature.

"We are working in the interest of the local communities and the wild animals," says Mugisha.

Mugisha also says that their intervention has contributed to the increase in the number of wild animals because livestock ranchers can now tolerate them on their land.

Given the fact that more than half of the park was degazetted due to population pressure in the 1990s, it is inevitable to avoid conflicts because half the number of wild animals lives on the ranches.

Edward Asalu, the chief warden of Lake Mburo National Park says ranchers used to complain that they didn't benefit from wild animals, which instead transmitted diseases, destroyed fences and consumed a lot pasture.

Fred Kamugira, the LC5 chairperson of Mbarara district says: "I have always been engaged in resolving disputes between wildlife authorities and pastoralists, but all this is no more."

Prior to the sport-hunting scheme, UWA introduced a project in which 100 impalas on the ranches were culled and the proceeds from the sale of the meat and skin distributed to the landowners.

The concept of utilising wildlife for the benefit of local communities is sweeping across the southern and eastern African countries under the catch phrase: "use it or lose it."

Two more locations, Kaiso Tonya in Hoima and the Kafu basin in Mubende, Masindi, Nakasongola and Luweero are being targeted for the expansion of sport-hunting.

"What is wrong with a few animals being killed so that many others and their habitat become secure?" Mugisha asks.

He says sport-hunting would replace the illegal hunting outside the protected areas since government does not have the capacity to enforce the ban on hunting.

He says unlike poaching where the mothers and pregnant wild animals are killed, sport-hunting targets very few animals, mostly the aged and baboons that have been gazetted as vermin.

He says the results of the project around the ranches of Lake Mburo National Park were encouraging.

"However, sport-hunting can be dangerous as it can destroy wildlife and render some animal species extinct if not well managed," said Jacob Manyindo, of the Uganda Wildlife Society.