Overpopulation, poverty and political unrest are still the biggest threats to wildlife in the Great Lakes region, according to environmental policy-makers.
Competition for land and resources in these densely populated areas is encroaching on protected areas, and political instability, especially along the Rwanda/Democratic Republic of Congo/Uganda borders, continues to jeopardise conservation efforts. Most worrying of all, the illegal trade in bush meat operating out of Congo’s lawless eastern provinces is thriving, with little sign of anyone being able to stop it.
Arthur Mugisha, executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), remarks: ”The biggest threat to conservation in this region is human expansion. We are talking here about small countries where populations are increasing and people urgently need land and food.”
The land surrounding the Great Lakes has the highest population density in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It also has some of the highest rates of poverty. The cultivation of land in this region extends right up to the boundary of protected areas, according to conservation experts.
The current picture is mixed, however, with the population of the rare mountain gorilla — the showpiece of Central African conservation efforts — actually looking better than it has for years.
According to Helga Rainer, head of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme for Uganda, ”quite a lot of progress has been made with protecting mountain gorillas.
”There was a 10% increase in the population at the last census. In spite of the conflict [in Congo], agents in all three countries have managed to coordinate their efforts.”
Less rosy is the picture for the more common (but still endangered) lowland gorilla.
Rainer says: ”The eastern gorillas have taken a real hammering because of the conflict. Mostly, they have been hunted for food. The decline in numbers has been truly dramatic, as has the steep decline in other animals, like elephants.”
The most direct threat to animal wildlife in these areas is poaching for bush meat, which is widely consumed, especially in places where other sources of food are scarce (as in Congo).
”The illegal trade in wildlife is always worse in areas where there are armed conflicts, like Congo and Uganda,” says Eunice Nyiramahoro, director of community conservation at the UWA. ”In these places animal wildlife is suffering because people are hungry and enforcing the ban on hunting is such a difficult, hazardous business.”
Ugandan government officials appear keen to deny that Uganda itself has a poaching problem. Mugisha says defensively: ”Poaching is not a problem in Uganda. We are containing it.”
But Nyiramahoro admits that poaching does occur. ”Yes, poaching is still happening in Uganda,” she says. ”Mostly this is for subsistence or sale to small village markets — not the commercial trade that goes on in Congo.”
But regular shoot-outs between park rangers and armed poachers, often ending in death (of the poachers), is testimony to the fact that even relatively stable Uganda has issues.
This week 15 poachers were killed by rangers in the Queen Elizabeth National Park and one sub-machine gun was recovered along with 100kg of hippo meat.
Poaching aside, political strife around the Great Lakes is also damaging wildlife habitats, as hefty refugee movements take their toll on the environment.
”There have been floods of refugees and militia groups coming in and out of these parks,” says Rainer. ”When refugees fled from the Rwandan genocide, a lot of forest where protected species dwell was cut down.”
Ultimately, policy-makers agree that no amount of enforcement will work unless governments address the problems of communities living in protected areas.
Historically, the founding of protected parks in the Great Lakes region is a sore point. A number of small communities claim they were pushed off their land when the parks were launched. Now they want some back. But UWA officials disagree.
”Most parks in these areas had no settlements when they were established. They were uninhabitable because of the tsetse fly. Nobody was forcefully moved out,” says Nyiramahoro.
But Patrick Tushabe, chief warden for tourism at Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, admits some communities may have been displaced.
”If you had woken up in 1952 to find your homeland was a game reserve, obviously you’d be unhappy,” he points out, ”but that was a long time ago. What is important is that we get communities living here now interested in conservation.”
Getting subsistence communities interested in conservation might be harder than it sounds, but policy-makers in Uganda are making some headway.
Revenue-sharing schemes, in which communities get a portion of earnings from tourism, are well established.
”These must be tied to specific community projects, which are planned by district authorities,” says Nyiramahoro. ”We use the money to build schools, roads — after asking these communities what they would like.”
Giving local communities priority in jobs arising out of tourism is another way. ”We are involving these communities directly with running lodges. This started in the gorilla parks, but now it’s everywhere,” she says. ”Only by addressing the needs of these people will conservation work.”