Human-wildlife conflicts rising as animals look for food elsewhere

By Chowoo Willy, Kirungi Patra and Oroma Gladys

The Pearl of Africa, Uganda, is a convergence zone for five of Africa’s important ecological zones and is home to an estimated half of the world’s mountain gorillas.  The country is rich in biodiversity, with close to 19,000 species of flora and fauna. However, these species are being threatened by invasive plants that are spreading fast across the national parks, displacing other species and affecting wildlife populations. 

Unlike many invasive species that are transplanted from elsewhere, most of these species are native to Uganda but have developed genetic modifications to adapt to climate change. The top three fast-spreading plants are Borassus palm, Dichrostachys Cinerea (sicklebush), and Parthenium Hysterophorus (congress weeds).

“These plants originally lived there, but their biological system has over the years led them to adapt. It is not exotic per se, but it is indigenous plants that have changed their biological methods of reproduction, spread and transmission due to climate change,” Dr. Margret Driciri, the acting chief warden of Murchison Falls Conservation Area, notes. 

As of 2018, the invading species had invaded 47 percent of the three national parks of Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth and Kidepo Valley National Park, according to a the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) as published by the Daily Monitor, and between 10-20 percent of Murchison Falls National Park, according to Driciri. NARO and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) were unable to provide more recent data despite multiple requests. 

Uganda has 10 national parks, with 712 protected areas covering 39,059 square kilometres of the country’s total land area of 241,550 kilometres.

According to the FY 2021 report from the Office of the Auditor General, both invasive and exotic plant species have affected wildlife populations in conservation areas in Uganda, and they are displacing the native species by competing for food, degrading habitats and introducing disease, as some are also poisonous to animals. 

Grazing animals such as hippos, buffalos, zebras, topis, and Uganda Kobs are particularly affected due to the loss of grazing land. 

“They grow in very large areas in a very short time, and they end up covering those areas that would be grazing areas for animals,” said Amanya Samuel, the chief warden of Kidepo Valley Conservation Area. “It means the number of animals will reduce if they cannot find enough area to graze, and the biodiversity fauna component will disappear; soil fertility will change; everything else will change just because they have manipulated and taken over.”

A recent analysis of IUCN red list data highlighted invasive alien species as the third most severe threat to birds and mammals.

Climate change a driver

Climate change has become a global crisis, leading to unpredictable weather patterns. According to the 2019 State of Climate of Uganda report by the Uganda National Meteorological Authority, the past decades have seen significant increasing trends in rainfall in the country. 

This has led to frequent extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, which stress native species and create opportunities for indigenous plants to become invasive species due to their unique adaptation strategies. 

An invasive species is generally an exotic plant or even animal that has never lived in that environment; instead, it was introduced there by the wind, animals or human beings. But in Uganda, some domestic plants have become invasive species over the years as the changing climate has caused their biological systems to adapt in ways that surpasses normality.

“That is what we are experiencing most; it is not exotic per se but it is indigenous plants that have changed their biological methods of reproduction, spread and transmission, and it is caused by climate change in most cases. They are spreading so fast and yet they are not palatable, and they have become a problem,” said Dr Margret Driciri, the acting Chief Warden at Murchison Falls National Park. 

The proliferation of invasive species in protected areas is linked partly to the changes in rain cycles, according to the Kidepo warden, Amanya.

“As it rains more, as it shines more and floods more, we expect some tilting, some change in diversity, and we think in one way or another, maybe increased carbon in the atmosphere could be one of the causes for probably the current too much rain in some areas and floods, and therefore favouring some of the species of Dichrostachys Cinerea to increase in this area,” he said.

The common plant species that have conquered most parts of the Kidepo Valley National Park in northeast Uganda are Dichrostachys Camera (sicklebush) and Heliconia Bencinica. Amanya estimated that they have consumed about 25 percent of the park’s land area.

In Uganda’s largest national park, Murchison Falls, which holds the highest diversity of wildlife, invasive species including Borassus plants, Acacia Nilotica and Dichrostachys Cinerea are also threatening to take over the savannah grasslands in the southern part of the park. The Borassus plant is a tall, single-stemmed, evergreen palm that can reach 3-7 metres long.

Drivers for these habitat changes include changes in vegetation levels, rainfall amounts, temperature, moisture level in the soil and the fire regime, which can all be attributed to climate change, according to the park authority.

“We know that [the sicklebush’s] adaptation is due to degradation to the environment- soil erosion and things like that – it has a good rooting system and the way the roots spread; it conserves the soil and it has one advantage on one side, and disadvantage on the other side,” Driciri added.

In southwestern Uganda, by 2018, invasive plant species had invaded more than half of Queen Elizabeth National Park. Some of the other invasive plant species common in this park in southwestern Uganda include speargrass, Dichrostachys Cinerea (Kalema njojo), Lantana Camara and congress weeds.

Masereka Sylvester, the assistant warden in charge of human-wildlife conflict management at Queen Elizabeth, said the invasive plant species have almost taken over the park.

In Lake Mburo National Park in western Uganda, the invasive plant species had conquered about 85 percent of the land area by 2018.

However, UWA is not able to establish the exact hectares of the parks that have been covered by these invasive plant species because mapping them requires a lot of resources, according to Bashir Hangi, the communications manager.

Plants with good rooting, such as the Borassus plant, have advantages to overcome changes and adapt to hardship, at the same time displacing other plants. Their roots can extend so deep to extract all the nutrients in the soil, which deprives other plants of this food. Some of these invasive species also produce toxic chemical substances that affect surrounding plants, causing them to die.

Dr. Atube Francis, a botanist (plant expert) and lecturer at Gulu University Faculty of Education and Agriculture, said the invasive species prevent other plants from photosynthesizing, the natural process of how plants manufacture their food from sunlight.

Dr. Atube said that those in the forest grow “so fast that they go and cover the Cambial (tissues of plants) of the forest, so preventing the other plants to get sunlight for photosynthesis, therefore causing such plants to die.”

Others coil around the trunks of trees, affecting the tissues of the plant that are responsible for transporting food manufactured from the leaves to other parts of the tree, such as the roots. This effectively starves the tree.

Human-wildlife conflict

According to UWA, the invading species are a major cause of human-wildlife conflicts in most of the national parks, because they push animals out from the protected areas in quest for pastures. This leads to conflicts with the communities living near the national parks.

The  2009-2018 report  by UWA on the causes of human-wildlife conflict in conservation areas in Uganda noted 17,567 cases of conflict, of which about 40 percent occurred at Murchison Falls, 8 percent at Queen Elizabeth, 5 percent at Lake Mburo and 5 percent at Kidepo Valley Conservation Area. More than half of the cases occurred in parks where invasive species have flourished.

According to the National Plan for Management of Wildlife outside UWA protected areas (2021/22-2030/31), it would require Ugx 18bn (about USD $4.8 million) to minimise conflicts around wildlife habitats and corridors.

In 2018 alone, a pride of 11 lions was found dead in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Masereka Sylvester, the assistant warden in charge of human-wildlife conflict management at the park, said it was an act of revenge by a farmer whose cow was killed by the lions.

In Kasese district, some of the villages that have faced the wrath of animals include Kanyangeya, Kyondo and Karusandara.

Geoffrey Bwambale, of Kyondo village in Mukhokya town council, says he lost his 10 acres of coffee from a wildlife invasion. 

Another victim in the same village, Mbamba Juliet, says the increasing cases of human-wildlife conflict have prevented her family from taking their children to school, since all the crops that they were expecting to sell to get money for school fees were destroyed by the animals.

Siriwayu Joseph, the district councillor representing Muhokya town council, says many people have even lost their lives as they try to chase these animals from their gardens.

 

Kabagambe Kamanda, the chairperson local council 3 of Buliisa sub-county, Buliisa district, says the invasion by elephants from Murchison Falls have made many school going children leave studies.

Kabagambe adds that this term, schools neighbouring the park have registered few learners due to human-wildlife conflict. He notes that the most affected schools include Waiga, Bugana, Kakoora and Nyamitete primary schools.

“Parents and children sleep late in the night while they spend most of the hours whistling, drumming to scare elephants from destroying crops in the gardens,” the chairman said.

Recently, elephants that escaped from Bugungu Wildlife Reserve within Murchison Falls killed a 42-year-old woman, a resident of Waiga village in the same sub-county.

Okoya Dennis, a farmer and the youth chairman of Purongo sub-county, lives in Koi village, a known hotspot for elephant raids.  He said that the animals, especially elephants, are attracted to consume crops such as groundnuts, rice, maize, sorghum, sunflowers and cassava. Elephants frequently attack them during the periods of harvesting or  rooting.

The number of elephants are increasing in the upper part of the Nile, Acholi sub region. In 1960, there were 16,000 elephants in Murchison Falls, but this number drastically declined to about 500 between 1970 and 2000 due to war and poaching. Since then, numbers have risen again to about 2,000 this year, according to Kato Raymond, the warden in charge of ecological monitoring and research.

While elephants eat the invasive Borassus plants, these palms produce fruits only once a year. In other times, elephants are forced to look for food from neighbouring villages, Okoya said. Elephants follow their traditional migratory corridors to look for food, routes they have used for generations. But in the 1960s, some parts of Murchison Falls were degazetted for human settlements – areas that the elephants are still visiting to look for food.

Opio Innocent Obal, another farmer from Lagagi in Purongo sub-county Nwoya district, said the cases of invasion by elephants are higher when their crops have grown.

“When it is dry season, you do not find the elephants, but when it is planting season, they come closer to the edge of the park and wait for the crops to begin maturing before they raid our gardens,” he said.

He further added that the elephants move in a group of about 15 to 20 and wait until it is dark to raid the gardens. He said that the elephants can eat about two hectares of maize in one night, while a Uganda Kob may eat about a square metre in a night.

Hangi of UWA said the colonisation of invasive species in the park has greatly contributed to these conflicts by reducing the palatable food for animals in the park.

Compensation of the wildlife victims 

By the end of December 2022, UWA had responded to 87 percent of the 7,861 reported cases of human-wildlife conflicts, such as by chasing animals away. The authority also constructed 45.4 kilometres of electric fencing at the national parks.

However, these responses do not necessarily include providing compensation for the damage caused by wild animals, which is mandated under the Uganda Wildlife Act of 2019. Many wildlife victims are yet to be compensated, despite UWA’s announcement in December 2022 that they would begin hearing cases of destruction and loss of lives caused by wildlife. 

The Wildlife Compensation Scheme provides for financing compensation claims for human death, injuries or damage to property caused by a wild animal outside a protected area. The long-awaited wildlife compensation scheme regulations were finally operationalised by the UWA on 5th August, 2022. 

The compensation scheme fixes 2 percent of monies collected by the Authority from the services it offers from each conservation area to be used for compensating human-wildlife victims, and/or monies appropriated by Parliament specifically for this purpose and monies from any other source approved by the Board.

In  May 2022, the Uganda Wildlife Authority executive director, Sam Mwandha, said UWA allocated Shs500 million (about USD $135,000) to compensate the affected households at Murchison Falls National Park in the financial year 2022/2023. He said the money was lower than expected due to less revenue generated during the year. 

Hon. Okello Geoffrey Charles, Nwoya East Member of Parliament and a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Tourism, Trade and Industry, said despite the scheme, human-wildlife conflict is still a big challenge characterised by a low and tedious compensation process for its victims. 

The claims are vetted by the National Wildlife Compensation Verification Committee, which makes visits to the affected sites and verifies documents with the efforts of the local leaders, and then submits claims to the Board with recommendations for possible compensation.

“As I speak now, only 78 people had their complaints processed, and out of those, 38 only have been paid in the last one year, out of over 7,000 cases,” Okello said.

Article 20 (1) of the  Uganda Wildlife Act calls for the establishment of a Community Wildlife Committee for each wildlife conservation area, which is mandated to liaise between UWA and the local community and nominate a representative to take part on the national Wildlife Compensation Verification Committee. 

However, the  Authority says the delay has been a result of laxity by the district leaders to send in their representatives to participate on this committee, which comprises representatives from the Authority in that conservation area, wildlife conservation NGOs operating around the area, and a representative of a local community wildlife association.

Amanya Samuel, Kidepo chief warden, says only Kotido and Kitgum of the six districts in the Kidepo Valley Conservation Area have so far nominated their representatives. 

Baranaba Muhonga (72), a resident of Karusandara village in Kasese district, says elephants recently destroyed his two-acre garden of maize, but all his efforts to have the park compensate him for his loss have been futile.

Interventions to reduce the invasive species

In 2019, the Uganda Wildlife Authority launched a more than sh500 million (USD $135,000) multi-pronged pilot project to reduce the invasive plants, implemented together with the National Invasive Species Coordination Unit, a branch of NARO, with support from the Inter-Ministerial Working Committee on Invasive Alien Species.

The project was meant to pilot an integrated management system for selected Invasive Alien Species such as Borassus plant, Dichrochahys Cinerea, Parthenium Hysterophorus among others, which involves the use of mechanical, cultural and biological control approaches. 

UWA is currently promoting early detection as the first step in the active management of invasive species. They are also using mechanical methods to identify, uproot, dry and burn these plants. In 2022 alone, UWA cleared 2,220 hectares of invasive species across Uganda’s national parks. 

The cost of removing these invasive species in an acre at Kidepo Valley ranges between sh200,000 and sh500,000 (USD $56-$139) depending on the level of their concentrations, while at Murchison Falls, the excavator and fuel costs come to almost sh3m ($811) per day.

“We come with a machine-like excavator; we pick them selectively; we fork the trees; we uproot it selectively; and we cut it so that it creates space for savannah to come; we heap them; they dry and we burn them,” said Kato Raymond, Murchison Falls warden.

Kato adds that they have been doing the work over the last two years based on available funds. They are targeting 500 hectares.

“Progressively, you know, we don’t have the [resources] to put down all the invasive plants. We target areas where they are closing up and displacing indigenous plant species, but of course funds are not constant,” he says.

The plant species ready for removal must be the ones that are not flowering or fruited, so that when they dry, they leave no seeds and therefore give no chance to germinate again.

Masereka, the Queen Elizabeth warden, says that UWA is involving a team of trained casual labourers using axes, machetes and hoes to get rid of the unwanted vegetation. An excavator is also being used to uproot sickle bush, which is then burnt.

At Murchison Falls, Kato says the park is also in the final process of signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the local community to allow them to use the invasive trees as firewood or timber, under supervision of the park authority.

Kato adds that increasing the numbers of mammals that eat the invasive species could also help in fighting the spread of these plants, because they would consume them and suppress their multiplication. 

“We would not even be spending money for removing these species. Mammals themselves would be manipulating the ecosystem or rangeland. We need trees;  we need plants, yes, but also we need mammals to control the forest, to balance the ecosystems,”  Kato notes.

Currently, there are 144 different species of mammals in Murchison Falls,  with grazers like buffalo at around 10,000, antelope at 3,500, giraffes at 1,250 and elephants at 2,000.

In Kidepo, UWA also recently introduced hundreds of Uganda kobs, elands and giraffes to the park in an attempt to enhance genetic diversity.

Here, the authority working through a group of hired community volunteers has also removed invasive species covering over 200 acres using hand hoes and axes. This was conducted in the southern part of the park, where most tourism activities are congregated. The park authority says other than helping the community get firewood, they also plan to involve the community in turning the invasive species into briquettes so that they can earn from them.

At Queen Elizabeth, the park authority has been able to clear hectares of sicklebush from the park, but NARO plans to introduce weeds-eating weevils to eat the congress weeds. Such a biological control system means using living organisms to reduce the number and level of multiplication of invasive species. 

Ms Kasifa Katono, an entomologist and the national coordinator of the National Invasive Species Coordination Unit at NARO, says the organisation will expand this method to other national parks in the future.

“We want to reduce invasive species; we have chosen congress weeds because they spread very fast. The seeds can easily colonise an area and grow very fast, and they cause abortion in animals,” she said.

The biological method of control has been used elsewhere in Uganda. In 1998 for instance, the government introduced the water hyacinth-eating weevil on Lake Victoria that helped to fight this invasive plant. 

The National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan II (2015-2025) lists invasive species as a major threat to biodiversity conservation, with emphasis on the reduction and management of the negative effects of these plants on biodiversity.

UWA hopes to develop an invasive species management strategy and make policy recommendations that enhance sustained invasive species management at local and national levels. The Wildlife Act 2019 calls for the Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry to control the introduction of alien species of an animal or plant in a wildlife conservation area.

However, during the 2023 presentation of the ministerial policy statement by the Minister of Tourism, Wildlife, and Antiquities to the Committee of Parliament on Tourism, Trade, Cooperatives and Industry, nothing appeared as a policy statement on invasive species management.

A member of this committee, Hon. Okello Geoffrey Charles, Member of Parliament of Nwoya East County in Nwoya district, says the 2023 ministerial policy statement did not contain adequate information about the magnitude of invasive species.

“The care for our conservation areas needs to be enlarged and broadened to become comprehensive, more comprehensive than it is now. These invasive species spread should also be to wake us up that we need to look beyond just invasive species and look at every sanity issue in the conservation areas,” he notes.

Okello says the government should always make funds available for continuous research on invasive species, gazetting affected areas and trying to contain the plants and destroy them at their source.

This story has been produced in partnership with InfoNile with support from IUCN/TRAFFIC and with funding from JRS Biodiversity Foundation and Earth Journalism Network. Additional data sourcing by Timothy Murungi.