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The variety of landscape and habitat in Queen Elizabeth National Park (QE) is breath-taking: volcanic craters, forests, savanna, the Mweya peninsular, mountains, and important Ramsar sites. It is the centrepiece of one of Africa’s most valuable networks of protected areas along the Albertine Rift Valley.
However, it has a turbulent history. Surrounded by people and agriculture and with eleven fishing villages inside the park, a border with the DRC, where wars have raged for decades, where both local and international road networks abound it is a complicated park to manage.
For decades, UWA has struggled in QE with both poaching pressures and managing human-wildlife conflict, especially where elephant crop-raiding is concerned. However, UWA has made considerable efforts to manage both and continues to do so.
Pontious Ezuma, UWA QEPA Chief Warden; says;
‘what many don’t appreciate is that over the past decades, UWA hasn’t had the resources to make the changes needed to resolve all of the problems and enable the park to be more successful. For so long only small tourism zones such as in Kasenyi were focused on. However, using the successful strategy applied in Murchison Falls, UWA has expanded management capability and protection to cover the whole park, resulting in very significant changes in attitude and investment requirements. Investments made through the Recovery of QE programme by UWA and the Uganda Conservation Foundation (UCF) have ensured that the foundations of protected area management are in place –helping the park to recover in terms of wildlife numbers, expanding tourism opportunities and regional economic development’.
Over the past five years, the EU, with funds including the CITES MIKES programme, has invested in UWA’s ability to manage the park and with additional support from the UCF, rangers have been trained and equipped, a communications network installed across the park, operational vehicles provided, a dozen ranger posts rebuilt and repositioned to protect critical landscapes, species and communities, and capabilities such as marine ranger units have all been established.
Additionally, UCF and UWA have reopened 16 waterholes – some of which tourists are already seeing and enjoying. In earlier times, the severe poaching had so decimated the animals that the waterholes silted up shifting wildlife distributions and movement patterns, often forcing wildlife into areas vulnerable to poaching, and into areas close to communities increasing the risk of conflict, such as elephant crop-raiding, lions following Uganda Kobs to the shores of Lake George and encountering livestock, illegally in the park.
These waterholes now hold wildlife in areas with better protection, away from communities –making wildlife safer and also reducing potential human-wildlife conflict.
These successes are encouraging new tourism investments including new lodge concessions. These will result in new tracks and new areas of the park opening up.
There is now a full-time UCF / UWA carnivore team in Queen Elizabeth National Park and the carnivore recovery strategy continues to be implemented. This team monitors lions on a daily basis and responds to prevent or help manage conflict across the park. Some carefully selected lions are satellite collared. If lions move out of the park, or into risky areas, the team is deployed to help prevent livestock or predator loss. The team monitors areas where lions are thought to be to ensure their safety.
There are about a minimum 75 lions in QE and others being encountered are added to the Recognition File, which will, over time, become more accurate.
Now that Virunga National Park is better managed and with, until recent months, lower levels of insecurity than over the past twenty years, wildlife, including lions, have responded by moving into Virunga, and spending longer there. So long as they are kept safe, this is good for lion conservation too.
The QE carnivore recovery strategy is making progress but it will take time to take effect.
Recently there have been devastating losses including three lions being electrocuted by a lodge illegally hooking its electric fence to the Umeme power lines. UWA was unaware this was happening; it was a terrible blow to everyone working to protect them.
Another devastating incident was the poisoning of lions in Ishasha. The gangs responsible were found and prosecuted by UWA. The poisons used are incredibly dangerous to humans too, and in many countries, including Kenya, they are banned by law. Arguably they should be in Uganda too.
UCF and UWA have worked to prevent such incidents and ensure teams can respond safely and professionally. These incidents kill not just lions and vultures but much wildlife in the vicinity. One critical intervention has been to host wildlife poison management courses by expert, Andre Botha from the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa. Two series of courses have been completed in QE, Murchison Falls and Kidepo Valley National Parks.
So when you visit QE next, don’t just rush through; explore and spend time enjoying the stunning areas and incredible wildlife.
