Due to the lockdown on most of Uganda’s tourism centers, there have been less tourists and related tourism activities. This has ceased tourism income earlier gotten from such activities thus pushing many people who depended on tourists into poaching the very animals the industry depends on.
According to Uganda’s wildlife authorities, there has been a drastic increment of poaching instances around national parks. The parks recorded doubled figures of wildlife poaching during the pandemic lockdown as compared to last year’s.
For example, between February and June of this year, the Uganda Wildlife Authority recorded 367 poaching cases across the country, more than double the 163 cases recorded during a similar period in 2019.
According to John Makombo, the Uganda Wildlife Authority director for conservation attributes the increase to the COVID-19 lockdown, lost income for people who work in the tourism industry and inadequate human resources to cover all the conservation areas. Uganda’s conservationists are looking for alternative income sources for the communities to stop the poaching.
“That loss of benefit has led to job loss and unemployment of many stakeholders. Some of the jobless community members have turned their spears against the wildlife as poachers,” Makombo commented. “
The most recent incident was the killing of Rafiki, a beloved silverback gorilla in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in South Western Uganda by three poachers who were later nabbed by the Uganda wildlife police authorities later after some death scene forensic investigations.
Commenting about the mater, Gladys Kalema Zikusoka , a founder and chief of Conservation through Public Health, said most gorilla killings were unintentional, but killings of other wildlife are intentional most times.
“They set snares for other animals that they want to eat. Like, the small antelope. Or a bushpig. They’ll go for those to eat them. And when they set these snares, gorillas can accidentally get caught in the snare. But worse still, we’ve had cases of people spearing gorillas. Yet they were not going for gorillas, they were going for diker and bush pig,” she said.
According to Uganda’s Tourism Act, 20 percent of all revenue collected in national parks is directed to local communities, including $10 of all permits from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. In the current circumstances, however, that money has dried up rendering the country’s wildlife volunalable in the hands of hungry un catered for communities.