Murchison Falls 2019-2020 Progress Report

Rangers with confiscated elephant ivory.

Introduction and History

Since 2018, Global Conservation has been supporting the work of the Uganda Conservation Foundation (UCF) and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to restore wildlife and tourism numbers in Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP), Uganda.

Murchison Falls was once the most visited park in Africa and home to the highest megaherbivore biomass on that continent. During the late 1970s to the year 2000, the park suffered extreme poaching, with elephant numbers dropping from 16,000 to under 500. The impact of poaching on other herbivores and the carnivores was just as dramatic – a complete collapse. 

Since the turn of the millennium, the core tourism area of MFNP has stabilized, resulting in a steady recovery in tourist numbers. Outside of the core area, poaching remained extreme. Since the gazettement of the protected area, no investment had been made to expand UWA’s ability to manage the park as a whole. As a consequence, vast areas remained vulnerable to poaching for decades, never allowing wildlife to distribute across the landscape. 

By 2012 the “Recovery of Murchison Falls” (RMF) program was established by Michael Keigwin, Founding Trustee of UCF. RMF is a mixture of adaptive management to arising situations and establishing foundations for long term management of the whole of the park, which has included: 

1. Developing the appropriate infrastructure where it was needed (i.e. ranger posts and marine ranger stations); 
2. Training rangers and wardens and equipping them; 
3. Expanding communications and coordination systems across the whole park; and 
4. Providing transport for all park operations. 

Repairing the patrol boats, including mending fiberglass and servicing engines. Photo courtesy UCF.

Since 2011, RMF has built twelve ranger posts in strategically important landscapes. This has expanded UWA’s permanent anti-poaching presence from 5% of the park to 70%. 

In the Delta, the core tourism area, threats to the park come from the Nile River and Lake Albert, where poachers disguised as fishermen would wait for patrols to pass and enter the park to lay thousands of snares. In 2013, the RMF program created the Marine Ranger Unit and established three Marine Ranger Stations, equipped with four patrol boats and two engines. Forty rangers were trained in boat operations, safety and rescue techniques and patrol operations from the waterways. Since then, 34 metric tonnes of wire snares have been removed from the Delta. 

Murchison Falls National Park rangers with confiscated snares. Photo courtesy UCF.

Snares are indiscriminate killers. The rare Rothschild giraffe, lions and elephants were being caught in very high numbers, and were suffering agonizing deaths and injuries. One third of the elephants in the area had snare injuries, including some with their trunks severed off. Consequently, in 2014 the RMF program created a veterinary department. The team saved thousands of animals, and still does.

The JOCC also supports the UCF sponsored UWA Vet Response Unit saving the Rothschild giraffe, lions and elephants trapped in snares. Photo courtesy UCF.

An armory was built in 2016. The armory also provided a secure store of ivory, crime scene evidence, snares and traps. To date, over 4,000 wheel traps have been confiscated, along with thousands of spears and knives and dozens of AK-47s. 

Photo courtesy UCF.

With the very visible changes to the park came a resurgence in tourism confidence and investment, and tourism numbers pushed beyond historical numbers to over 100,000 a year. Twenty percent of gate revenues are shared with local communities, and the success of the park has pushed revenue sharing contributions from $50,000 per annum to over $400,000 per annum. This has been quickly changing community attitudes and perspectives toward the park. 

In 2018, Global Conservation began to support Murchison Falls National Park, moving these initiatives further forward and helping to establish the basic foundation that any national park needs to succeed.

2019-2020 Progress

Global Conservation funded $260,000 from Jan 2019-March 2020, and we are committing $200,000 this year with matching funding from International Elephant Foundation and other donors.

As of 2019, Murchison Falls still had no communications network and no means of coordinating any form of park operations. GC helped to secure satellite phones, which were deployed into remote areas in case of a problem. 

The back of the armory and JOCC.

Construction of a Law Enforcement Center

It was imperative to bring the network of resources and capabilities together into a coordinated and well-managed system. Consequently, Murchison Falls Law Enforcement and Operations Centre (LEOC) was designed and built to integrate a Joint Operations Command Centre (JOCC), Armory, police station and cell block, guard room, storage facility, radio and internet towers, and operational assets and supplies.

Construction of the Law Enforcement and Operations Center. Photo courtesy UCF.

“The JOCC and LEOC has been an incredible success. We cannot thank you and your Board enough. The project has revolutionized the parks operations and even now, in pretty dark times, the level of motivation is huge. Global Conservation was an incredible partner in helping this all become a reality. Murchison Falls continues to recover at an extraordinary rate, and all of your help will help make that sustainable." - Uganda Conservation Foundation

The LEOC was designed and built to ensure the facility supports the UWA Law Enforcement and Security Strategy, integrating UWA Law Enforcement departments and inter-agency partnerships (e.g. with police). The LEOC is the first of its kind in Africa, integrating all relevant departments and providing for interagency requirements.

The completed Law Enforcement and Operations Centre. Photos courtesy UCF.

The LEOC provides:

1. Solar power facilities, including transmission to other ranger posts.
2. Two Radio Towers and repeaters.
3. Digital radio distribution to all ranger posts, marine ranger stations, cars, and patrols.
4. Internet in Park HQ. 
5. Thuraya Satellite phone deployment to areas of little to no communications coverage. 
6. The JOCC, an inter-agency partnership with the Ugandan Police. All arrested individuals are kept on site and by the police, removing any possibility of accusations, people having access to suspects and providing alternative stories, or being bribed to get out. 

The JOCC is an inter-agency partnership between the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the Ugandan Police.

Buried in the foundations of all of the buildings are snares, never to be used again.

Since 2012 when the UWA / UCF Recovery of MFs programme started, over 4000 wheel traps have been collected, and over 34 metric tonnes of wire snares. Each of the buildings built during the programme has over 10,000 snares buried in the cement foundations. Photo courtesy UCF.

Implementation of EarthRanger Systems

Over the past few years Michael Keigwin has been working with Vulcan to bring UWA and Uganda up to date with counterpart parks and conservancies. The development of EarthRanger and its protected area management functionality are second to none.

In the JOCC, the TBRONet system with digital radios is now up and running, but the number of handsets needs to be increased. TBRONet is now integrated into Vulcan Inc’s EarthRanger system which is also now up and running. Here Julius is seen learning how EarthRanger works, and discussing how it will change operations to being ‘real time’ – requiring considerable organisational change. He is also deploying teams into areas to college new GPS points of features in each area to build up the detail of the maps. Photo courtesy UCF.

 Community Development Program

The JOCC has benefited from and provided incredible opportunity to support UWA/UCF’s community development program. 

In 2019, 100 youth from the north of the park were selected to undertake vocational college courses. All of the youth came from different families, but each came from families who interact with the park – e.g. some from serious poaching communities, and others who experience high levels of elephant crop raiding.  Courses included hydraform brick making, industrial painting, tractor operations, installation of water tanks and guttering, fencing, tree nursery set-up and tree management. Many of the youth then joined UCF in Mubaku, park HQ, where they were contracted to make 25,000 hydraform bricks. The first bricks were trials to see how different materials, such as local sand types and murram, performed. Once done, bricks were made and then used in numerous projects in HQ. 

100 youth from the north of the park, from villages and households impacted by elephant crop raiding and from heavy poaching communities, were given scholarships to go thorugh vocational college courses. Some learnt to make hydrafoam bricks, others industrial painting. There were eight courses, followed by a minimum of three months apprenticeships. In the building of the JOCC and other buildings in the park, all of the bricks were made by the teams, and the team stayed on working for Mutoni Construction for the whole year to finish the project. What an achievement. Most of this team are still working on projects in the park and nearly all now wish to be rangers. Photo courtesy UCF.

Overall, 57 three-month apprenticeships were hosted in Mubaku. Of those, 20 remain onsite, continuing the paid apprenticeship scheme. They have now made the bricks and completed the buildings, all under the expert guidance of Mutoni Construction, the country’s second biggest construction company. 

Having been in the park for a year, 17 of the apprentices are looking to become UWA rangers. This is especially significant given that they come from communities that tend to have negative perspectives toward the UWA and the park. Their attitudes have now changed, and they are now trusted park ambassadors within their communities. 

Rangers on patrol in MFNP.

The project, in partnership with UWA, Pacer Community College, and the private sector was able to generate long term employment amongst vulnerable communities. This has made a considerable difference to park-community relations, especially among the 100 youth and their families. 

Wildlife Monitoring

GC supported the first all-digital Aerial Wildlife Survey in Africa. Traditional aerial elephant surveys rely on human spotters counting elephants one by one while looking out the window. With the latest airborne imaging systems, baseline wildlife population surveys and detailed land use and deforestation maps can be automatically generated for park and wildlife management, community development and wildlife corridor planning. 

The UCF Carnivore & Scavenger Program is another important initiative that is integrated into the programmes UCF/UWA runs in Murchison. Working where there are no roads, and where they have no knowledge of the landscape and lions, is tough on time, resources and vehicles. However, the teams are finding lions.

All satellite collars put on are registered on the EarthRanger system, so we can always monitor where the lions are and how they are using the habitat. If the collar stays static for a while, an alert will be made to deploy to see what has happened to the lion. Photo courtesy UCF.

 The team is currently tracking six lions that have left the park in the north – and into communities that may poison them. We know nothing about the home ranges of these lions – we need to learn, and fast. Here, team members work to put a GPS collar on a lion. Photo courtesy UCF.

Ranger training 

UWA/UCF have been leading the countrywide ranger training program. This involves US and UK military, as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The Quick Reaction Force gets training.

In addition to basic training, many specialized courses have been offered, from boat operations to 4WD driving and use of winches to wildlife poisoning management. All rangers benefited from first aid and a medical management course, and twenty rangers started training to become a quick reaction force.

On patrol in the Sengenge Hills – well below where UWA has a permanent presence in the park. The team is setting up observation points and plans to counter poaching in the region.

In 2020, the dangerous northeast sector of the park will have additional ranger posts built, providing 14 more rangers in the area.

Digital Radios and Solar Network

Thanks to Kevin Marriot and the Forgotten Parks Foundation, UCF has procured the initial kit necessary to establish the backbone of a digital system across Murchison Falls. 

Whilst the whole park is limited by the lack of power, solar power has been installed at the sector command stations including Kololo (where there is a tower), Punu Rii and Got Labwor.

Two repeaters, 30 radios and four car radios have now arrived in Uganda and are with UWA, ready for installation in the next month. Installation will be carried out by the Forgotten Parks Foundation with UWA’s own technology staff present to benefit from learning opportunities.

The guard room at the JOCC.

Future Goals

1. Develop operational capacity through training and acquiring additional communications equipment.
2. Register satellite collars on lions and other wildlife to increase real-time ecological monitoring.
3. Install final two radio towers and repeaters, along with solar power.
4. Acquire and deploy GSM camera traps.

River patrol – 120km of the River Nile, 100km of which has to be patrolled by foot. Poaching groups target hippo, antelopes and of course elephants coming to the water. In April 2020, Sgt Albert Odar, a legend in Murchison Falls, and seen in the pictures attached, sadly died in a car accident whilst returning from a patrol in the NE of the park.

Thank Yous

“We can’t thank all of our Recovery of Murchison Falls Protected Area donors enough. Seeing the aerial survey results was proof that everything we have done and continue to do is making a massive difference. There are not many places where wildlife numbers have grown so much, and will continue to do so.” - Uganda Conservation Foundation

UWA and UCF would particularly like to thank the International Elephant Foundation, Global Conservation, Tusk Trust, the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and the Dulverton Trust. 

The Murchison Falls NP team is proud to have earned several awards over the past two years. Julius Obwona, Murchison’s Warden in Charge of Law Enforcement, was selected as the Duke of Cambridge Tusk Africa Ranger of the Year, 2018. In addition, the Chief Park Warden of Murchison Falls was given a Presidential Award and later became the Executive Director of the National Forestry Authority. UCF’s Project Manager Patrick Agaba was then named the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundations Conservation Hero 2019. 

In the middle of the kids is Warden in Charge of Law Enforcement – Julius Obwona. In 2018 Julius was the Overall Winner of the Duke of Cambridge Tusk Africa Ranger of the Year Award. To the communities where the apprentices came from, Julius is far from a popular man. Now they have spent a year in the park, he is their mentor and friend – and soon to most, their boss. To the programme, the 100 youth are ambassadors to the park, who can help us break the poaching cycle and build relations on real employment, trust and development. Photo courtesy UCF.

In Memoriam

In April 2020, we lost one of Murchison Falls’ legends. Falling from the back of a Land Cruiser, Sgt. Albert Odar landed on his neck and head and never recovered. Odar was a close friend and one of the most effective anti-poaching operatives known. Poaching communities nicknamed Albert "the Leopard". He will be missed greatly. In his honor, UCF and UWA have teamed up to create a "Fallen Rangers Fund" for Uganda, and have already raised $5000. Funds will be dispersed, as available, to cover fallen rangers' children’s school fees. 

Sgt. Albert Odar looks over the Nile River.