Badru Mugerwa
Other projects
14 Oct 2020
Improving Local Capacity for Acoustic-Based Wildlife and Law Enforcement Monitoring in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda
I used my first Rufford Small Grant (project ID 32411-1) to assess the patterns and identify unauthorized hunting hotspot communities at Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park - a premier tourist destination and biodiversity hotspot. Results from my first project showed that unauthorized hunting remains persistent in some areas of the national park despite ongoing anti-poaching efforts. Gorilla ecotourism at Bwindi raises revenue to support law enforcement that protects wildlife from unauthorized hunting. However, this exploitative activity remains a concern even for mountain gorillas, as evidenced by the 2020 killing of a silverback gorilla. My aim is to reduce the threat unauthorized hunting poses to the African golden cats (and other wildlife).
Ungulates (duikers and bushpigs) are targeted, but like a “wildlife mine”, snares are non- selective, killing or injuring non-target species including Bwindi’s flagship mountain gorilla and the charismatic African golden cats. In 2019, an estimated 80 AGCs perished in snares at Bwindi, Echuya and Kasyoha-Kitomi forests of south-western Uganda. The root causes of poaching at Bwindi are poverty, the need for food, lack of employment, and access to basic health care. There is evidence that incentivizing local communities via livelihood improvement initiatives strengthen interventions against poaching. I am using the findings from the first project as a foundation for a second grant to establish community-based anti-hunting livelihood-improving activities in the identified unauthorised hunting hotspot communities.
A “seed" sow and a family beneficiary (standing to the right of the animal) for the Embaka "Piglets for Bushmeat” (P4B) program at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda.
The proposed project will engage local people to reduce unauthorised hunting via a four-prong novel approach:
1) community mobilization against unauthorized hunting (“Poachers to Protectors (P2P)”),
2) establishing an alternative source of income and protein through pig farming (“Piglets for Bushmeat (P4B)”),
3) provide an alternative source of income to bushmeat trade through our Conservation Pesa (CPesa) Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCO) groups, and
4) strengthen existing collaborations with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, local governments, and Embaka CBO for more efficient and effective mitigation of unauthorized hunting and its impacts on the African golden cat and other wildlife through community-based conservation initiatives.
This project will expand existing “pig seed banks”, where local families are helped establish smallholder pig farms for income and meat, with the commitment that they, in turn, help a neighbour do the same. Via the “CPesa” program, we will use SACCO groups to diversify family income through borrowing and saving. This project will also continue dialogue within the local communities to inspire social pressure against unauthorized activity in Bwindi.