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Rhino
: In the News :
Ugandan animal population beginning to recover from turbulent past
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Ugandan animal population beginning to recover from turbulent past |
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Published: 08/16/2006 9:22:50am
Kampala- The big game population in Uganda's wildlife
parks has been steadily
rising after surviving near-extinction during
the regimes of former President
Idi Amin and those that followed the
dictator's ouster in 1979, Uganda's top
conservation official
said Wednesday.
While poachers were busy hunting down
animals with impunity in
Uganda's conservation areas during Amin's bloody rule,
government
security forces were doing exactly the same, pushing down the
population
of elephants from 30,000 in 1960 to less than 2,000 at the
time of Amin's fall.
The elephant population, mainly hunted for ivory, continued to
fall, reaching
1,900 in 1996, but it has been rising steadily since
then from 2,400 in 2003
to the current figure of 3,467, the Uganda
Wildlife Authority (UWA) executive
director, Moses Mapesa, said in
the government newspaper, The New Vision, Wednesday.
The hippopotamus population which was 26,000 in 1960, was
reduced by one half
at the time of Amin's removal and fell to 4,200
in 1996. However, it started
rising again, reaching 5,300 in 2003 and
to 5,709 in 2005, UWA said.
UWA could
not provide the 1960 figures for the rare mountain
gorillas, only found in the
thick bamboo forest mountain enclave
shared by Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, but
said that they were 280 in 1983 and currently number 340.
This
is half of the world's remaining population of these endangered
primates.
There
were no 1960 figures for chimpanzees available, but they
were 3,300 in 1996 and
have now risen to about 5,000.
" We have been vigilantly enforcing conservation
measures.
There has been a dramatic decrease in poaching in the country during
the past 15 years. We have had very isolated incidents of poaching.
We have
totally stamped out poaching for ivory in Uganda," Mapesa
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa in an interview Wednesday.
The population of buffaloes which was 60,000
in 1960, was
reduced by more than two thirds at the time of Amin's fall and
reached 18,000 in 1996 before beginning to recover, reaching the
current figure
of 21,034.
Some of the large mammal species, notably the rhinocerous, were
completely
wiped out from Uganda during the Amin era and the period
following his ouster.
The rhino population which stood at 300 in the 1960s, went down to
203 in 1983
and was non-existent by 1996 before 6 new species were
imported and reintroduced
in the game parks early this decade.
Mapesa said that government support for
vigorous conservation
measures including the clamp down on poachers and classifying
of more
wildlife areas was responsible for the budding population of some
big
mammals.
" Since
1986 when this government came to power, we have had
a lot of political support.
Since then, we have increased the number
of national parks from four to 10.
We now have ten national parks and
13 wildlife reserves. They have supported
our efforts to clamp down
on poachers," Mapesa added.
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