Wildlife authority blamed for impending famine in Bunyoro sub-region

According to authorities in the district, they have seen the worst raid by elephants this year, with over 30 elephants per attack. Efforts to get Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to fence off the park have been futile.

"We are in fear of an outbreak of hunger soon because many acres of crops have been destroyed," David Katusabe, the Buganda-Kichoke village chairperson, said.

According to Ngwedo Sub-county chairperson Kennedy Oringi, when contacted to come retrieve the elephants, the rangers never turn up.

“We always ask rangers to come and remove elephants from people’s gardens but it seems that these rangers have failed,” he said.

Farmers have come out to decry the losses they are suffering from destroyed gardens and the lack of food to feed their families.

Godfrey Busingi, a cassava farmer in Mubbaku Village, in Ngwedo Sub-county, narrated in an interview that he will not be able to make any money from his cassava produce this year. He added that they are being forced to prematurely harvest their crops.

“Given the current cassava price, I would have earned about Shs28 million this season because I sell each acre of cassava at Shs4 million but this will not be possible," Busingi said.

At the time of the interview, farmers in the area were collecting evidence of the damage to get compensation from UWA.

“We are gathering evidence, taking pictures and getting letters from veterinary officers and we want to write to Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) so that we are compensated,” he said.

For some farmers, the raids have forced them to put their lives at risk. As in the case of Muhammad Warom, a resident of Bugana-Kichoke village, who said that he spends sleepless nights guarding his garden and thinking about how his family is going to survive.

“We have been overwhelmed by roaming elephants and they have impoverished us. We have resorted to cutting trees for charcoal and yet we have been growing our own food. Our children are now coming back from school to find no food,” he said.

Wilson Kagoro, the community conservation warden for the park, says that the park is at low capacity to manage the park's boundaries. He asked the affected communities to be vigilant in order to report the raids in time.

"The park is big and it longer has boundaries and we don’t have staff everywhere. Whenever these incidents happen, we expect the community to report to us so that we are able to respond and chase these animals away and if they delay, then it’s them to blame not us," he said.

Kagoro revealed the park's plan to enclose its elephant population (2,800 elephants) which includes erecting 20 Kilometres of electric fence from the Nile to Waiga River, 20 kilometres fence in Masindi, 30 kilometres in Kiryandongo, and 31 kilometres in Nwoya.

UWA also dug 70 kilometres of trenches in Kiryandongo and Nwoya to mitigate invasions.

He also attributed the invasions to people farming closer to the park boundaries than previously done. That this attracts the animals to change their diet.

"We have a number of people’s coming up with many activities near the park especially in Buliisa and where used not to be garden there are garden without the barrier, animals come to change the diet especially when people grow crops that are palatable to them," he said.

He mentioned that the elephant population has grown compared to the 90s when it was small.